WHAT MAY I HOPE? 



By GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD 



WHAT CAN I KNOW? 

An Inquiry into Truth, its Nature, the Means 
of its Attainment, and its Relations to the 
Practical Life. Crown 8vo. pp. viii-311. 

WHAT OUGHT I TO DO? 

An Inquiry into the Nature and Kinds of Virtue 
and into the Sanctions, Aims, and Values of the 
Moral Life. Crown 8vo. pp. x-311. 

WHAT SHOULD I BELIEVE? 

An Inquiry into the Nature, Grounds, and 
Value of the Faiths of Science, Society, Morals, 
and Religion. Crown 8 vo. pp. xvi-275. 

WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

An Inquiry into the Sources and Reasonable- 
ness of The Hopes of Humanity, especially the 
Social and Religious. Crown 8 vo. pp. xvi-310. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 



AN INQUIRY INTO THE 
SOURCES AND REASONABLENESS 
OF THE HOPES OF HUMANITY, ESPECIALLY 
THE SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS 



BY 

GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD, LL.D. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 

LONDON, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 

1915 



COPYRIGHT, 
BY LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 



PREFACE 

THE psychology and philosophy of 
knowledge have excited the interest 
of the world's best thinkers through 
many centuries of history. Especially did 
Aristotle, the greatest of teachers among the 
ancient Greeks, write several voluminous works 
dealing with the different main aspects of this 
subject. In his De Anima, or Psychology, he 
discussed the phenomena of sense-perception, 
including dreams; he also discoursed upon the 
functions of the Nous, or mind, both receptive 
and active even to the extent of having an im- 
mediate grasp upon the highest truths. His 
Treatise on Logic, or so-called Organon, ana- 
lyzed the intellectual processes of conception, 
judgment, and the syllogism, with such skill 
and thoroughness that it was not until recent 
times that any considerable modifications of the 
formal laws of thought were considered neces- 
sary. In these works and in his Metaphysics, 

[v] 



313784 



PREFACE 

he treated the categories in a way to lay for all 
time a foundation for the theory of knowledge, 
that branch of philosophical discipline which 
has now received the somewhat pretentious 
title of "Epistemology." 

The Dialogues of Aristotle's master, the ever- 
illustrious Plato, were, so far as their method is 
concerned, built upon the hypothesis that all 
the processes of human thought, which result 
in the conceptions and morally influential ideas 
of human nature, need a critical examination 
in order to distinguish between the real knowl- 
edge and the pretentious and false opinions 
which are embodied in them. 

Before, during, and after the lives of these 
two immortals, every phase of scepticism and 
agnosticism was rife in Greece and in her colo- 
nies; and the arguments by which the views 
destructive of the very foundations of science 
were supported, have received no important 
additions whatever from the mouths and pens 
of their modern followers. 

In Oriental, and especially in Indian reflec- 
tive thinking, quite as earnest and subtle ar- 
gumentation went on for centuries, as to the 

[vi] 



PREFACE 

foundations and surety of knowledge, touch- 
ing the world of physical appearances, the 
human soul, and the gods or other invisible 
existences assumed by human minds in order 
the better to account for their own more imme- 
diately assured experiences. In these quarters 
of the world, many schools of Hindu and Bud- 
dhistic philosophy, with widely divergent views 
as to the foundations and assurance of the 
belief that man can somehow come into a living 
commerce with Reality, have contended and 
flourished more or less vigorously. The gen- 
eral result, however, has been the doctrine that 
the world of sense and of self-consciousness is 
all illusory. Thus a free and unguarded do- 
main has been left for speculation as to the 
existence and nature of that which is truly 
Real. 

It is plain, then, that he who attempts seri- 
ously to consider for himself or for others the 
question, What can I know? has available 
much of both popular advice and scientific 
dicta from the past, to assist him in groping for 
an answer. For the same answer, the student 
expert in the current psychology and philoso- 

[vii] 



PREFACE 

phy will find an abundance of material, an 
enormous library of pamphlets and bulky 
volumes, ready to hand. 

The case is scarcely less favorable for the 
study of others' opinions by the one who raises 
the question, What ought I to do? Indeed, in 
some respects it is even more favorable. Both 
Plato, in substantially all his Dialogues, and 
Aristotle in his critical writings on Ethics, 
Politics and Poetics, as well as frequently in a 
more casual way in all his other writings, con- 
stantly bring before their readers questions of 
right and wrong conduct, and undertake the 
discussion of the principles which ought to 
enable every individual, if he will, to decide 
between the two. In ancient Greece, the 
Sophists made the psychology and philosophy 
of morals a matter of chief interest and heated 
debate. Neither could the most confirmed 
Sceptics, or the most pronounced Agnostics, 
venture to pretend that morals had for them 
no concern. 

Among the ancients there was, however, a 
sort of tacit consent, if not explicit agreement, 
in accord with the assertion of Aristotle, that 

[ viii ] 



PREFACE 

subjects in ethics did not such was their 
very nature admit of a strictly scientific 
treatment. All this has remained true through 
the succeeding centuries of ethical controversy; 
it remains true at the present hour. In dis- 
cussing moral problems, whether in a theoreti- 
cal or a practical way, we cannot bring to bear 
the conclusions of psychological science or the 
accepted principles of the philosophy of con- 
duct, in the same authoritative manner as is 
available when discussing many of the prob- 
lems of knowledge. In attempting to answer 
the question, What ought I to do? we are, 
therefore, obliged to appeal rather to enlight- 
ened moral consciousness and to the changes 
in the customary morals which the develop- 
ment of such a consciousness produces, than to 
the results of experimental or other forms of a 
so-called scientific psychology, or to a meta- 
physics with claims to be based upon such a 
psychology. 

In approaching the question, What should 
I believe? we are still more strictly debarred 
from any appeal to scientific authority or to 
the most widely accepted principles of a specu- 

[ix] 



PREFACE 

lative philosophy. Our beliefs seem to stand 
much farther from the sources of demonstra- 
tion, or other forms of producing irresistible 
conviction, than either our knowledges or our 
morals. Indeed, the very nature of belief ap- 
appears to distinguish it from the assurance 
which belongs to all "knowledge- judgments," 
whether these repose upon personal observa- 
tions and inferences or upon the authority of 
others. The sanest and most influential of the 
principles which regulate the habits of our daily 
life or conduct, are easily proved to rest upon 
grounds of observation and inference that are, 
at least in all the most important instances, 
sufficient to justify a claim to confidence in 
their evidence. But the beliefs of men seem 
much more than either science or morality to 
be infected with doubts; since they certainly 
are much more dependent on obscure and shift- 
ing and often irrational instincts and emotions. 
With this fact of psychology agrees the fact of 
history. In treating of the nature and the 
obligations of this attitude of the mind called 
"Belief," we could find comparatively little that 
had been written or taught in the past, worthy 
[xl 



PREFACE 

of entire confidence from the point of view of 
its claim to a strictly scientific character. 

We are now ready for a confession which we 
have been approaching in a roundabout and 
we fear the reader will think a somewhat 
evasive and shambling way. The general phe- 
nomena of that experience of the human mind 
which is called "Hoping," do not lend them- 
selves to scientific treatment; and we shall 
make no pretence that they do. If some am- 
bitious young psychologist should propose to 
subject them to the tests of the psychological 
laboratory, or even to the method of the ques- 
tionaire, we should not expect for him a brilliant 
success. Human hopes are even more difficult 
to enumerate, to describe, and to weigh or 
measure, than are human beliefs. Even callow 
boys and girls are particularly shy about dis- 
closing their hopes, and not less, where they 
might be supposed with some show of reason 
to be able to do so, if they sincerely wished so 
to do. Nor would the sincerest wish make 
most of them capable of any such description 
as would be useful for the purpose of laying 
the foundations of an exact science. Men and 

[xi] 



PREFACE 

women of mature years, of the riper wisdom, 
and of chastened emotions, who might be 
much more competent to contribute material 
for the theses of enterprising candidates for 
the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, will not 
respond to the methods of science, when the 
subject of their hopes concerns anything which 
makes their tabulating and analysis worth the 
considering. 

The answer to the question, What may I 
hope? must, then, consist of a series of reflec- 
tions based upon the experience of hope, whether 
as descried and remembered in one's own case; 
or as suggested by the popular language and 
action of the multitude; or as recorded in the 
memories and diaries of those who have had the 
richest experiences in this, as it is likely 
in all the other emotional and sentimental life. 
It will reveal opportunities rather than dictate 
terms; it will hold out chances rather than 
promulgate laws. 

But while disclaiming all attempts at the 
scientific or logical method, and all pretence of 
having reduced to a science the results of this 
method, we may avail ourselves of one impor- 

[xii] 



PREFACE 

tant distinction which stood us in good turn 
when we were considering the nature and the 
claims of human beliefs and faiths. This is 
the very commonplace distinction between the 
lesser and the greater. In arguing their reason- 
ableness and their claims upon the will, and also 
their promises of practical advantage, these two 
classes of hopes do not stand upon the same 
grounds. How they differ, it will be one of the 
more important and grateful tasks to point out 
in its proper place. That they do differ, and 
that the assurance of hope which attaches itself 
to the greatest hopes is the greatest and most 
reasonable and productive of practical good, 
this is the truth which alone justifies the seri- 
ousness and value of any attempt to answer the 
inquiry, What may I hope? 



[ xiii ] 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. NATURE AND SOURCES OF HOPE ... 1 

II. RIGHTS AND LIMITATIONS OF HOPING . . 35 

HI. THE ASSURANCE OF HOPE 65 

IV. THE PRACTICAL USES OF HOPING ... 93 

V. CONCERNING HOPES, SCIENTIFIC, POLITICAL 

AND SOCIAL 122 

VI. THE HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION . . 161 

VII. THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY . . . .201 

VIII. THE HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM . . 262 

INDEX . 307 



[XV] 



"I will pass then beyond this power of my 
nature also, rising by degrees unto Him who made 
me... Yea, I will pass beyond it, that I may 
approach unto Thee, sweet Light" 

AUGUSTIN 










WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

CHAPTER I 
NATURE AND SOURCES OF HOPE 

T is recorded as a tradition of that semi- 
mythical philosopher, Thales of Miletus, 
^ that on being asked what possession of all 
those within the grasp of man is most universal, 
he answered: "Hope; for they who have it, 
often have nothing else." Now Thales lived 
six and a quarter centuries before the Christian 
era. He was assigned the headship of the Seven 
Wise Men as an evidence of the esteem in which 
his practical wisdom and statesmanlike ability 
were held. But he was also credited with much 
mathematical and astronomical knowledge; and 
he was the first to turn the currents of Greek 
thinking, in its efforts to explain the world of 
experience, away from an appeal to the spiritual 
influences of the gods, toward the efficiency of 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

natural forces that were, from the origin of 
things, combined with the matter out of which 
things were believed to have been made. Evi- 
dently, then, Hope stood in his thought as a 
foremost efficient psychological force for ex- 
plaining the actions of the human race. Some- 
thing like this same view was concealed in the 
saying of Goethe who declared, "Hope is the 
second soul of the unhappy"; for this would 
seem to imply that when all the life has gone 
out of an individual or a nation, if only the 
emotion of hoping can be revived, another 
efficient active principle may be incorporated 
into the same dead body. 

Such language as has just been quoted is 
indeed figurative and does not serve strictly to 
define either the nature or the sources of the 
various attitudes of the mind which we are 
accustomed to characterize by the one word> 
Hope. It does, however, suggest certain im- 
portant inquiries. 

Among inquiries into the nature and sources 
of hope the most obvious one, perhaps, concerns 
itself with the universality of the phenomenon, 
and with the reasons for its universality. That 

[2] 



NATURE AND SOURCES OF HOPE 

the wise Thales was right when he declared the 
power of hoping to be the most universal pos- 
session of mankind, we have indeed no avail- 
able way of proving by induction. We cannot 
collect a toll of the emotional experiences of all 
mankind. But, then, if such a toll were neces- 
sary to any kind of either theoretical or practi- 
cal knowledge of human nature, it could not be 
provided. Nor is psychology alone in its defi- 
ciency of power to establish by such an induc- 
tion its most trustworthy universals. There is 
not a positive science that can lay down any one 
of its most generally credited laws or principles 
on a basis of facts collected from an observa- 
tion of all, without exception, of the particular 
cases. It is not by absolutely complete induc- 
tion, any more than by absolutely convincing 
demonstration, that we learn the nature and 
the ways of any portion of the vast Reality, in 
which we live and move and have our being. 
We need not, however, much hesitate to pro- 
claim as a fact the universality of hope, and its 
place among the emotions under the influence 
of which every man looks upon the complex of 
things and of other men which constitutes the 

[3] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

individual's environment. All men hope, 
for something, to some extent, and at some 
times; indeed, we are probably safe in saying 
that everybody is at all times hoping for some- 
thing or other. 

To turn this discovery of fact assuming, 
as we seem justified in doing, that it is a fact 
into a form of words which has slightly more 
the smack of science, we may say: Hoping is 
^natural for man. It is not at all unlikely that 
we shall have to leave the final explanation of 
the experience in the large, without any very 
much more definite explanation. It would in- 
deed be rather mortifying to the scientific pride 
of the psychologist to be obliged to accept this 
fact without further explanation; as, for 
example, in the celebrated case of the reason 
why "dogs delight to bark and bite." Of this, 
the well-known account is: "because it is their 
nature to." But the delight which the animal 
has in this form of activity, and the defensive 
value of it as expressing and securing "the 
will to live," may help us vastly in the under- 
standing of the reasons why the animal acts 
in this way; and, also, why it is well for 
[4] 



NATURE AND SOURCES OF HOPE 

him and for his species that he does act 
in this way. Something like this attempt 
at a scientific justification of human hopes 
may quite properly be adopted in the course 
of our future discussions. Just now, how- 
ever, let the simple statements stand undis- 
puted and unrebuked: It is a fact that all 
men do hope; and it is therefore natural for 
man to hope. 

Like everything else which is true of men in 
general, the dependence of hoping on the indi- 
viduality of every member of the species is 
quite as obvious as its universal naturalness. 
Indeed, the habit of hoping is, of all emotional 
habits, about the most conspicuously tempera- 
mental. This truth is evinced in all the various 
classifications proposed by psychology for the 
different main kinds of temperaments. What- 
ever variations in number and names and de- 
scription may characterize the proposed lists, 
they are all pretty sure to make prominent the 
so-called "sanguine temperament." But the 
leading mental and emotional characteristic of 
the sanguine temperament is its hopefulness. 
Indeed, to be sanguine and to be habitually 

[5] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

hopeful, in the popular language, amount to 
about the same thing. 

The dependence of the habit of hoping on 
the temperament of the individual is obviously 
great; but it is, though not so obviously, yet 
in reality, rather complicated. First, we have 
to notice that every temperament, and perhaps 
especially the sanguine, is influenced both by 
external and by physiological conditions. 
There are changes in the temperature, in the 
electrical and physical conditions of the atmos- 
phere, in the landscape and in the distribution 
of the clouds, that have no small and negligible 
influence on the hopes of the majority subject to 
these changes. But even where the influences 
of this general physical sort are most marked in 
the case of the majority, the principle of in- 
dividuality is by no means wholly abrogated or 
set at naught. In a severe storm at sea, when 
the multitude of unfortunates, even the most 
sanguine of them under ordinary circumstances, 
are greatly depressed and weighed down with 
frightful forebodings, there may be others who 
are buoyed up, or even made exultant, by any 
one of a number of different kinds of hope. 

[6] 



NATURE AND SOURCES OF HOPE 

There are few so little observant of their own 
changes in mental states, and of the obvious 
causes of the changes, as not to have learned 
something, before they come to years of matu- 
rity, about the dependence of their own hopes 
on their own bodily conditions. I am not 
speaking here of the rise and fall of the invalid's 
hopes of recovery in their sequence upon the 
daily changes in the symptoms of his disease. 
My thought is rather to call attention to the 
significance and certainty of the experience, 
that all one's hopes, of every sort and degree of 
intensity and consistency, are influenced by 
sometimes obvious, but often obscure and 
scarcely definable, physiological conditions.^ It 
is even possible to make out a rough exhibit of 
certain classes of diseases, one distinguishing 
symptom of which is the marked influence they 
have upon the depression or the exaltation of 
the patient's hopes. It would not be true to 
say that no one dies happy whose disease is 
located below the diaphragm. Nor can it be 
proclaimed as true without exception that those 
afflicted with tuberculosis of the lungs are in- 
variably hopeful. In all cases, the tempera- 

[7] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

ment, which is something belonging to birth 
and heredity, although influenced in every in- 
dividual's case by the changes of environment 
and of physiological conditions, determines in 
an important way the changing moods with 
which are met the changing physical and organic 
conditions. 

On even this more purely physical ground of 
the emotional reactions of hope and of all 
the rest the permanent influence and value 
of the psychical characteristics must be chiefly 
taken into the account. Whatever allowance 
must be made for the ancestral and the envi- 
ronmental influences upon the different tem- 
peraments, it must be admitted that we are 
comparatively safe in our inferences, only when 
we can appeal to immediate experience to dis- 
cover what the different so-called temperaments 
are actually like, and what they may be ex- 
pected to impel the individual to think and to 
do. But more than habits of thought, are 
habits of emotion, and of the action determined 
by emotion, dependent upon the different tem- 
peramental mixtures. We choose the term, 
"temperamental mixtures"; for few tempera- 

F81 



NATURE AND SOURCES OF HOPE 

ments are quite pure examples under any one 
of the ordinary schemes of classification. Most 
individuals are, the rather, when described by 
their psychical characteristics, and this, in 
spite of the many impressive figures of speech 
derived from organic types, is the most tenable 
manner of describing them, most individuals 
are of "mixed temperament." 

When, then, we speak of a hopeful or a de- 
sponding temperament, of a sanguine or a 
phlegmatic person, we may, in the use of each 
one of these four types, be describing a quite 
different mixture, if regarded from the psycho- 
logical point of view. For example, one man 
may be sanguine, and so generally inclined to 
be hopeful, because he is a man of strong will; 
another, because he is a man of weak will. One 
individual may be despondent, on account of a 
lack of certain moral affections; another on 
account of an excess of other moral affections. 
Weakness and strength of intellect, in certain 
specific cases, may operate in the same diver- 
gent way. The man who sees clearly the laws 
and principles involved in the future settlement 
of any issue, though of sanguine temperament, 

[9] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

may be less hopeful in this particular case 
than is the man who, although of a generally 
melancholic and doubtful temper, is unaware 
or thoughtless with regard to these laws and 
principles. It was the cautious farmers of 
Maine who were most easily beguiled into in- 
vesting their hard-earned savings in a scheme 
for extracting gold from sea-water. Excessive 
sleepiness or sluggishness, and excessive irrita- 
bility or "wide-awakeness," may operate in 
different individuals, in particular circumstan- 
ces, to make one man hopeful and another 
despondent. "Indolent phlegm" may be mis- 
taken for "sanguine hope." 

The variety of individuality which charac- 
terizes the universality of the habit of hoping, 
and of the conditions external and internal 
which modify the habit, is not, of course, pecu- 
liar to this attitude alone, toward the physical 
world and toward life, of the human mind. It 
is true of every mental and emotional attitude; 
and it is to be ascribed to the very nature of 
personal life and to the laws and principles of 
personal development. The hopes of one man 
can no more be precisely the same as the hopes 

[10] 



NATURE AND SOURCES OP HOPE 

of another man, than can his thoughts or his 
beliefs. Indeed, on account of the very vague 
and evanescent, and as well largely irrational 
nature of much human hoping, we should 
naturally expect that men would differ in re- 
spect of their hopes more than in almost any 
other way. Even at this preliminary and quite 
undefined stage of our investigation of the 
question, What may I hope? it is not improper 
to reply: You may possibly be quite reasonable 
in cherishing a considerable stock of hopes of 
your very own. But then the complement of 
this is equally true: Every wise man will do 
well once for all to recognize that a vast number 
of hopes, not altogether or not at all inappro- 
priate to other persons, would surely end in 
disappointment if cherished by him. Not 
every individual is warranted in having the 
same hopes. 

Perhaps the next most obvious characteristic 
of hope is a certain uniqueness. To be sure, 
all emotions that succeed in being analyzed out 
of the infinite complexity of the life of feeling, 
and so of getting an established name for them- 
selves, can on that ground alone claim a certain 

in] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

amount of distinction. If they were not some- 
what unlike other emotions of the simpler sort, 
or a special compound of elements distinguish- 
able in the more complex emotions, they could 
scarcely claim a name and a place for them- 
selves in the psychology of human feeling. But 
all this makes the facts still more remarkable. 
Hope is, according to Thales a remark 
which we have agreed to accept as substantially 
true the most universal of human posses- 
sions. Hoping is an activity, a state or a func- 
tion (we do not now care which of these two 
words is employed) of the human consciousness. 
Psychology calls itself the science which de- 
scribes and explains the facts of consciousness. 
And yet among the hundreds of works on psy- 
chology, large and small, from varied points of 
view and in many languages, the merest men- 
tion of the topic, "Hope," is scarcely to be 
found in one of a hundred. There are scores 
of pages in the more voluminous books, and 
even large separate volumes, written on Fear, 
in connection with which Hope, if mentioned 
at all, is mentioned only to be placed in con- 
trast. The psychologist Bain, in his six hun- 
[12] 



NATURE AND SOURCES OF HOPE 

dred large pages on the "Emotions and the 
Will," has less than two pages on the emotion 
of hope. Even within this brief space he 
manages to make the mistake of analysis in 
identifying it with a certain kind of belief, 
"tested simply by the elation of its mental 
tone." He also remarks (p. 531) that the 
"antithesis of Hope is, not Fear, but despond- 
ency; of which the highest degree is Despair." 
Now this is very much the same as to say that 
the opposite of hope is non-hope; for despond- 
ency is, in this use of the word, simply the 
withdrawal of the promise (spondeo) which 
hoping has made, or would make, and the 
ensuing condition of hopelessness into which 
this withdrawal plunges the soul. 

But while Professor Bain is not successful in 
providing an "antithesis" for the emotion of 
hopefulness, he is quite in the right when he 
denies that the emotion of fear affords, in a 
way to meet the demands of psychological 
analysis, the desired form of opposed feeling. 
Love and hate, attraction and repulsion, cour- 
age and cowardice, and numerous other pairs, 
are both popularly and critically bound to- 

flSl 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

gether as opposites in the same class of mental 
attitudes or tendencies. They rule each other 
out of the mind or of the seat of control for the 
practical life. They contend together, and 
conquer from each other more or less of the 
domain ruled over by the will; but they do not 
quietly coexist. The emotions- of Fear and 
Hope, however, do not stand in such relations 
of contrast, antithesis, or opposition. For they 
do not belong to the same class of emotions. 
And if we make a brave attempt at forcing them 
into a place side by side under one of many 
headings or rubrics, such, for example, as 
the animal emotions, emotions of the intellect, 
emotions of action, the aesthetic emotions, the 
moral emotions, etc. we find ourselves pretty 
completely baffled at the very start. 

Fear, in its lower forms, is one of the most 
distinctly animal of all the emotions. For this 
reason, books like those of Angelo Mosso bear- 
ing this title, can find an abundance to say 
about the action of the reflex nervous system, 
of the circulation of blood in the brain, and the 
beating of the heart, in producing this emotion; 
and about the tremblings, physiognomy of 

F141 



NATURE AND SOURCES OF HOPE 

pain, and insane frights and terrors which the 
emotion in its more intense forms produces. 
In men, as in dogs and other animals, and even 
in fishes and beetles, fear seems for the most 
part to be a nearly, if not quite completely, 
physical affair. Of all the emotions, it lends 
itself best to the quite inadequate and now 
discredited Lange-James theory, that the feel- 
ing is essentially nothing but the complex of 
sensations arising from the physiological con- 
dition of the peripheral organism. Doubtless, 
in not a few, perhaps in the majority of cases 
of sudden and vague fears, or seizures of almost 
insane terror, the elements of sensational origin 
are the principal factors in the emotion itself. 
But this is decidedly not so in the human feel- 
ings which we designate as our fainter or our 
firmer and more elevated hopes. In many of 
the animal fears, it is quite impossible to tell 
with any approach to precision, what we are 
afraid of. Hope seems, however, to demand 
some sort of clearness of the mental picture of 
the object for which the hope is entertained. 
One may indeed speak of vague longings, and 
of aspirations and ambitions that are as yet 

[15] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

far from defining themselves in the conscious- 
ness of the Self that experiences them. These 
may arouse and stimulate the development of 
certain hopes; and these hopes may be doomed 
either to fulfilment or to disappointment. But 
it is not good psychology to call these longings, 
aspirations, and ambitions themselves by the 
term "hopes." There must be some rather dis- 
tinct mental activities of the higher order of 
intellect and imagination, under the guidance 
of associations which are themselves born of 
previous experiences of pain or pleasure, in 
order that hope may spring up in any mind. 

We cannot, then, speak of animal hopes as 
we may somewhat freely speak of animal fears. 
Probably none of the lower animals is capable 
of any conscious state even faintly resembling 
a man's hope. The dog over whose head we 
hold the tempting piece of meat, although his 
jaws are dripping with the secretions excited 
by a pleased expectancy, is not the mental and 
emotional counterpart of the man who looks 
forward to even the physical reward of his 
efforts at the realization of a deferred hope. 
Nor if we throw the animal back into the con- 

[16] 



NATURE AND SOURCES OF HOPE 

dition of restlessness which preceded by an 
hour the time of feeding, do we excite within it 
feelings resembling those of the most closely 
allied of human hopes. On the other hand, if 
dog and man are startled by some threatening 
noise, or are made to witness the snatching 
away of the alluring physical comfort by robber 
paws or robber hands, their first emotions of 
fear and anger are almost precisely, both 
physiologically and psychically, alike. 

In saying this it is, of course, not meant that 
the emotion of human hope is without any physi- 
ological basis or physiological effects. But any 
cautious and thoughtful student of the subject, 
even when equipped with the most delicate appa- 
ratus for solving the problem, would be slow to 
say just what that basis is, and what those effects 
are. All emotional conditions tend to affect the 
heart and general circulation, to raise slightly 
the temperature of the brain, to produce changes 
in the muscular system, and to alter the physi- 
ognomy. In the cases of more exalted condi- 
tions of hopefulness, all these physiological 
phenomena may be observed. In the more 
prolonged and quiet conditions of the moral 

[17] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

and religious hopes, the detection of the physi- 
cal basis and physical reverberations would be 
much more difficult, even if it could be accom- 
plished at all. We may grant, as we must, 
that this is just as true of intellectual and 
spiritual fears, or of moral anger when kept in 
control, as it is of the conditions and the effects 
of hoping. But the contention is only par- 
tially justified. For in all cases of the intensi- 
fying of a hope to the highly emotional stage, it 
is the allied forms of emotion which seem to be 
chiefly responsible for the most marked of the 
physiological effects. If, for example, the hope 
gets a sudden and great accession through the 
added belief that it is now quite surely to be 
realized, the emotions of joyful surprise spring 
up with great strength. And these emotions 
are distinctly and powerfully influential over 
the condition of the organs, both central and 
peripheral. In fact, these emotions, when very 
intense, often produce a dangerous and even 
fatal shock. On the other hand, if the hope 
lingers and grows fainter and less probable of 
any realization in spite of all one's wisest 
plans and utmost efforts to obtain the thing 
[18] 



NATURE AND SOURCES OF HOPE 

hoped for, there naturally ensues a condition 
of faint-heartedness which may culminate in 
despondency or even in utter despair. But 
despondency and despair are not so much the 
opposite of hope as we have already said 
as they are the negation of hope. Melancholia 
of every sort has quite uniformly a distinctly 
marked physical causation and physical ex- 
pression. It may, or it may not, follow upon 
the loss or the diminution of some cherished 
hope. This is largely a matter of tempera- 
ment and training in self-control. However 
it comes about, it is usually responsible for 
many evil effects upon the physical organism. 
This fact does not throw much additional light 
upon the physiological basis of hope, that is, 
beyond what everybody knows by common 
rumor, if not as is extremely likely by 
his own experience, namely, that a hopeful 
condition of mind favors the improved func- 
tioning of all the vital organs, conspicuously 
those concerned in circulation and digestion. 

The somewhat unique character of hope as 
disproving the effort to make it the antithesis 
of the much more distinctly animal, physio- 

[19] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

logical (and so explicable on physical grounds), 
emotion of fear may be illustrated in yet other 
ways. The more intellectual and imaginative, 
not to say spiritual, the fear becomes, the more 
possible it seems to be, not to make it the ade- 
quate antithesis of hope, but to lessen certain 
of the sharper contrasts of the two. When 
Kingsley affirms: 

"He who fears Virtue fears Him whose likeness Virtue is": 

or Southey makes Joan of Arc confess, 

"I have wrestled vainly with the Lord 
And stubbornly, I fear me"; 

they mean to depict attitudes of mind of a very 
subtle and complex sort, which contain not a 
few of the elements of thinking and imagina- 
tion, that much more nearly resemble those 
entering into the higher forms of hoping. 
4 ''Fearing Virtue," and so fearing Him whose 
likeness Virtue is, does not, indeed, amount to 
precisely the same thing as hoping for the re- 
wards of virtue; and fearing a Holy God is not 
precisely the same thing as placing one's hopes 
in such a God. Nor when Joan of Arc is fear- 
some of having wrestled with the Almighty both 
[20] 



NATURE AND SOURCES OF HOPE 

too stubbornly and in the end vainly, is she 
altogether in the condition of the soul who 
wrestled with an equal stubbornness, and yet 
would not confess failure, but kept on saying: 
"Hope thou in God, who is the health of my 
countenance and my God." But certainly, 
these attitudes of fear toward their objects are 
not the "antithesis" of the attitude of hope 
toward the same objects. Indeed, the fears 
and the hopes depend upon essentially the 
same conceptions of those objects. They in- 
volve and supplement each other, if they are 
not precisely identical. There are not a few 
things which we both fear and hope for at the 
same time, according to the particular aspect 
of them which happens to be prominent or 
which we voluntarily assume to regard. There 
are the fearsome hopes of the young girl at the 
thought of becoming a bride; or of a married 
woman at the thought of giving birth to a 
child. These fears and hopes do not stand 
apart, or move the soul by their contrasts, so 
much as they blend in one complex attitude, 
the elements of which keep changing in inten- 
sity, toward the same future even, according 

[21] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

as that event presents this or that of its many 
aspects before the expectant mind. 

There is another curious evidence of the 
unique character of the mental state of hoping. 
There is a great dearth of synonyms for the 
word Hope. In the richest of the modern 
languages we are furnished with only a single 
word from each. If you want to express the 
idea of hope you can do it in a single word only 
by using the one word hope. Yet there is truth 
of fact and profounder truth of ethics, in what 
Epictetus said: "A ship ought not to be held 
by one anchor, nor life by a single hope." In 
fact, the lives of men in general are "held" by 
a great variety of ever-shifting hopes. And 
yet we have only one word to express what is 
the essential characteristic of them all. 

If now we go to our dictionaries to obtain 
more exact information as to just what hoping 
is, we are told: "It is desire accompanied by 
expectation;" "cheerful expectation;" "a con- 
fident looking for a future event." But this 
definition is more than ordinarily disappoint- 
ing. For, at least some expectation is not 
simply the "accompaniment" of desire in 
[22] 



NATURE AND SOURCES OF HOPE 

forming the complex emotion of hope; it is of 
the very essence of what we mean when we 
speak of hope. The accompaniment of some 
expectancies is anything but cheerful, anything 
but an end which we desire or for which we 
hope. Indeed, in attempting to specify the 
ingredients of the compound medicine for the 
mind which hoping proves itself to be, we must 
certainly add something important to the de- 
sire and the expectancy. This something addi- 
tional is the feeling of trust. Without trusting 
something or somebody and indeed, as a 
rule, without trusting many things and more 
than one person we cannot indulge ourselves 
in hoping. This is illustrated by the fact that, 
while the French word for hope (esp6rance) 
seems rather to lay emphasis on the element 
of expectation, the German word (Hqffnung) 
lays more emphasis on the element of trust. 
The German word, therefore, seems of all 
three most suggestive of the more spiritual 
nature of certain hopes which have for their 
objects the beliefs and faiths of morality and 
religion. 

These three forms of feeling desire, expec- 

[23] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

tation, and a certain attitude of trust seem, 
therefore, to constitute the more noteworthy 
affective factors of the complex emotion of 
Hope. The intensity of each one may greatly 
vary in the individual cases of hoping. It 
habitually does vary in dependence on the tem- 
perament of the individual indulging or cherish- 
ing the hope; and also, in dependence on the 
nature of the object which it is hoped to realize. 
Desire may be intense, expectation small, and 
confidence weak. This is the modification of 
the emotion with which the physician and 
friend look upon the dying man and quote in a 
faint-hearted way the motto of despondency: 
"While there is life, there is still hope." 

The complex emotion of hoping is, however, 
invariably a sort of blend of the various affec- 
tive factors which compose it; it cannot dis- 
pense with any of them, although it is not the 
precise equivalent of any one or two of the 
three. Like all instances of psychical chemis- 
try, the nature of the compound can be known 
only through experience; it cannot be pre- 
dicted a priori, as it were. Take before the 
most exalted intellect the proposition: With so 

[24] 



NATURE AND SOURCES OF HOPE 

many grains of desire, mix so many of expecta- 
tion, and to this add so many more of a certain 
kind of trust: What will the compound be? 
and no answer could possibly be forthcoming. 
We must have the experience of hoping in order 
to know what it is to hope. 

A more accurate description of the nature of 
hope requires some analysis of its intellectual 
sources. Thus far we have only dealt with the 
emotional side of human hopes, and have 
vaguely implied that they, of course, since all 
men "do the trick" of hoping, must have their 
roots in human nature. We have used the 
makeshift of an explanation in saying, "It is 
natural for all men to hope." But in consider- 
ing the unique character of this so universal 
emotion, its dependence in a special way on the 
intellect and the imagination has been at least 
indicated. When compared with many other 
forms of feeling, such as both the popular and 
the scientific language associate most closely 
with it, hope appears to be less animal, more 
intellectual, and, therefore, prospectively fitted 
for more exalted spiritual uses. How true this 
seeming is may speedily be discovered when it 

[25] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

is understood in what relations hoping stands 
toward knowing and believing. Of course, no 
one would think of identifying hoping with a 
"kind of" knowing; for the approaches to a 
perfect knowledge lead in a direction away from 
the increased intensity and efficiency of merely 
hoping. The identification of hope with a 
"kind of" belief, which Professor Bain suggests, 
has already been sufficiently refuted. Yet we 
cannot understand the nature of hope as an 
experience of emotion unless we take chiefly 
into our account the way in which hope lays 
its basis, so to say, in knowledge; but especially 
in beliefs and faiths, personal and moral. 

Without some knowledge that has reference 
to the object of the hope, and to the probable 
or possible means of its attainment, hope can 
have no foundation in experience. Intellect 
and imagination, by their joint working, must 
create the object of desire. In this work of 
creation, they are, as a matter of course, depend- 
ent upon the knowledge acquired through past 
experiences of observing, learning, inferring, 
and whatever other means are available for 
obtaining the particular desirable knowledge. 

[26] 



NATURE AND SOURCES OF HOPE 

But desire wants to get possession of its object. 
The way to get possession must be planned; 
and the plan must be framed in accordance 
with at least a certain minimum of knowledge 
as to the selection and use of the proper means 
for its accomplishment. The savage desires 
the maiden of another tribe; he has some ex- 
pectation of winning her; he trusts his own 
craft and strength of persuasion; he has the 
hope of winning her. The confidence and the 
expectation, as well as the desire, imply various 
kinds of knowledge derived from past experi- 
ences with persons and with things. The same 
conclusion holds, whether it is proposed to ob- 
tain the hoped-for bride by forcible rape or by 
the more complicated and concealed methods 
of modern civilized courtship. What I know 
absolutely nothing about, that I cannot desire, 
or expect to obtain, or trust myself or other 
persons or things for the means of attaining. 
The absolutely and completely unknown can- 
not be the object of hope. 

There are degrees of knowledge, however, 
and different ways of attaining the different 
degrees. It is not, in general, the higher de- 

[27] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

grees of knowledge which form the basis of our 
hopes. If one knows with a complete certainty 
that any desired good is in the future coming 
to one, in this case one can scarcely any longer 
be said to be hoping for it. But hopes have to 
do with future goods. And although we may 
assume, and may actually feel as though we were 
sure of the future, we are never in fact quite so 
sure as of the present or the past. The son 
who knows that his father has left him by will 
a certain piece of property, is more apt to say 
that he "expects" some day to be its owner, 
than that he "hopes" to own it. The expecta- 
tions of the nephew whose rich bachelor uncle 
has become displeased with him for his extrava- 
gance are, the rather, to be classed among the 
more doubtful hopes. If I have deliberately 
planned to take a train for New York tomorrow 
morning, I seem warranted in saying that I 
fully expect to go. To express oneself in terms 
of hope only, about matters of this sort, would 
seem to give evidence of a lack of foresight and 
decision of character. In such matters, a man 
ought to know what he is going to do at least 
twenty-four hours in advance. But if, under 
[28] 



NATURE AND SOURCES OP HOPE 

conditions of poor health or of pressure of other 
duties, I am asked whether I shall be at a cer- 
tain convention a month from now, I can only 
say: "I hope to be there." The bride who 
goes to the church at the appointed hour to 
meet her promised husband, expects to be mar- 
ried; if she can only say that she hopes the 
bridegroom will be there, she either shows her 
fear for his safety or her distrust of his fidelity. 
We must conclude, then, that the knowledge 
which forms the basis of our hopes is such as 
seems to us at the time only to have a certain 
incomplete degree of evidence as to the future 
event. It is not such knowledge as enables the 
astronomer to predict that a certain transit or 
eclipse will take place and be visible at a cer- 
tain time and locality; it is, the rather, such as 
prompts him to say that he hopes he will be on 
the spot to observe the phenomenon, and that 
the weather will be favorable. It is, custom- 
arily, the projection into the future of cer- 
tain inferences that, with reference to that 
future, have only a higher or lower degree of 
probability, which forms the basis for human 
hopes. 

[29] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

We hasten to call attention to the fact that 
this knowledge, which forms the basis of our 
hoping, implies the trust of reason in its own 
power to make credible inferences; and also 
reason's trust in the stability of certain relations 
among things, and between us and things, and 
among men in their dealings with one another. 
If nothing were doubtful, we should not hope; 
if everything were doubtful, we could not hope. 
Hope depends upon future probabilities. It 
"deals in futures," as the phrase is. It involves 
a species of betting, of taking chances, of trying 
one's luck in the lottery of life. But it is not 
for this any the less essentially reasonable, if 
made to be so under the control of experience 
and of the chastened will. 

It follows from the character of this relation 
between knowing and hoping, that the power 
of drawing just inferences is what safeguards 
the wisdom of human hopes. These inferences 
do not need to attain the character of demon- 
strative certainty, or even of the conclusions 
of the positive sciences, in order to justify 
human hopes. The development and modi- 
fication of human hopes must, however, take 

[30] 



NATURE AND SOURCES OF HOPE 

these demonstrations and results into their ac- 
count. In this way it may perhaps soon come 
to be high time for relinquishing the hope of 
making machines capable of perpetual motion; 
or of running the mechanism of society and of 
government with a perfect smoothness, as long 
as the men and women who compose society 
and "run" the government are so rough in 
thought, in manners, and in morals. 

From all this it appears that the more safe 
and specially appropriate sphere for human 
hopes is to be found in connection with human 
beliefs. Indeed, the feeling of trusting which 
has been found to be a part of the emotional 
mixture which we call hoping, is essentially 
dependent on intellectual belief. This "intel- 
lectual belief" is essentially dependent upon 
probable evidence; but it is not therefore 
necessarily unreasonable. It is, on the con- 
trary, that attitude of intellect and imagination 
toward its object, on the basis of which most of 
our intercourse with things, and all our inter- 
course with our fellow men, is habitually 
conducted. What we believe in as desirable 
and attainable, although only on grounds of 

[31] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

probability, that we hope for. The intellectual 
attitude of belief, and the emotional attitude of 
hope, stand in special and highly significant re- 
lations to each other. In almost all matters, 
and not in matters of religion only, we live by 
faith and hope rather than by science and 
mathematical or logical demonstration. Our 
beliefs, both lower and higher, form the basis 
of both our lower and our higher hopes. 

Three remarks, all of which only anticipate a 
small part of their own significance, seem quite 
logically to follow the analysis which has just 
been made of the nature and the sources of hope. 

Of these the first is the very obvious reminder 
that hoping is a present attitude of mind and 
heart toward a future good. This patent fact 
connects two subordinate inquiries with every 
specific attempt at a practical solution of the 
main question, What may I hope? These are: 
Is the thing worth hoping for? and, What are 
the chances that, for me, it is at all likely, or 
even possible, of attainment? One may not, 
y reasonably, hope for what is totally unworthy 
of one's hopes, or for what is absolutely beyond 
the reasonable limits of one's obtaining. 

[32] 



NATURE AND SOURCES OF HOPE 

We notice also a certain permissive character 
to hope; and this should be taken into the ac- 
count as modifying in a way the harshness of 
the warnings just uttered against morally 
wrong and unwise acts and forms of hoping. 
It was to bring out this permissive character 
that the word "may" was deliberately chosen. 
Doubtless one may sometimes, if not habitu- 
ally, hope for something, the prospect of at- 
taining which is very remote and obscured with 
quite reasonable doubts. For although human 
hopes are in a way based on knowledge, and in 
a more significant and intimate way based on 
beliefs and faiths, hope seems entitled to go 
beyond both knowledge and belief, on wings of 
inference and imagination that are fitted for 
flight in very thin air. The fall is far; the risk 
is great; but the native air of hope is in the 
blue, above the smoke and grime of earth and 
above its clouds as well. 

The third observation is more important still. 
Just as there are lower and higher beliefs, so 
there are lower and higher hopes. Some hopes 
are peculiarly consonant with the spiritual and 
personal nature of man. They seem like almost 

[33] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

indispensable factors in his personal life. For 
the best development of this life they are abso- 
lutely essential. They therefore carry a cer- 
tain large weight of evidence in their own 
behalf. This is a truth to which we shall be 
obliged to refer again and again in all our 
attempts to throw some light on the prac- 
tical question, What may I hope? Especially 
will this appear both necessary and convenient 
in dealing with the hopes of morality and 
religion. 



[34] 




CHAPTER II 
RIGHTS AND LIMITATIONS OF HOPING 

'NDER what circumstances does a per- 
mission create an obligation? and 
How does a privilege become converted 
into a claim? these are questions the settle- 
ment of which has much to do with establishing 
relations of friendship or enmity between indi- 
viduals and between nations. For example, 
in the rear of the land occupied by the Bromp- 
ton Oratory is a stile, the existence of which 
has for many years been a token of a promise of 
free passage for any pedestrian, that was given 
by an ancestor of the present owner. But the 
permission has by this time created obligations 
between the landlord and every citizen of the 
great city. Every beggar's or cripple's hope of 
saving himself a long walk to get from Bromp- 
ton Road to Ennismore Gardens or Kensington 
Gore has been converted into a right to use this 
stile. But, on the other hand, as a sign of his 
claim over this privilege, the owner of the land 

[35] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

has the right, and is under the obligation, on 
due notice to close this free passage once each 
year. To occasion or cherish hopes is, in gen- 
eral, to establish rights and undergo obligations. 
This transformation between permission and 
obligation, privilege and claim, is often elabo- 
rately regulated by law. But there are hun- 
dreds of other cases which have a bearing upon 
the daily lives of us all, where the outlines 
between the two sets of relations are not at all 
so clearly drawn. Is it not considered a fit 
subject for the mother's solicitude, though not 
for a summons into court, that the suitor who 
has created "expectations" in the mind of the 
daughter should put himself under "obligation" 
" by declaring his intentions "? He, in his turn, 
quite as frequently and not less justly, feels 
himself aggrieved if the hopes which he thinks 
have been deliberately raised by the same 
daughter, are flouted as though they implied 
no claim on his part, or obligation on the part 
of the one who had excited them. Between 
considerable bodies of men and between na- 
tions, there are few more frequent and powerful 
causes of strife than the promises, made or 



LIMITATIONS OF HOPING 

implied and then withdrawn or forfeited; or 
the privileges that have been granted under 
certain circumstances and then curtailed or 
abrogated under changed circumstances. The 
cowboy who has been permitted to feed his 
herds upon Government lands acquires in his 
own thought a perpetual right to this use, and 
to the hopes which it encourages. He is ready 
with good conscience to shoot the officer of the 
same Government when, in the discharge of 
his duty, and in the name of the law, the latter 
attempts to carry into effect the reversal of the 
implied permission. Of wars and threatenings 
of wars between nations, certain concessions, 
special permissions and privileges, whether 
made matters of treaty or not, when the expec- 
tations encouraged or deliberately manufac- 
tured by them end in disappointment, have 
always been among the most fruitful sources. 

Our analysis of the nature and sources of the 
emotion of hoping has shown how difficult it 
must be to reduce its exercise to any precise 
rules of control, whether by the subject whose 
hope it is, or by the advice of others, or by the 
authority of law. So subtle and complex is 

[37] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

this form of human feeling, and so dependent 
upon the infinite variety of individual charac- 
teristics, under the ever-changing external 
circumstances and moods physiologically in- 
duced, that the science and art of right conduct 
seem, antecedently to detailed examination, 
excluded from this sphere. It appears that 
the emotion of hoping can neither be excited 
nor regulated by strictly logical processes. It 
knows no laws of right and wrong behavior; it 
recognizes no limitations to its demands. For 
these and other reasons, we put our main prac- 
tical inquiry in the permissive form. We did 
not venture to ask, What can I hope? or, What 
ought I to hope? or even, What should I hope? 
In fact, however, questions indicating the rights 
and the limitations of hoping are frequently 
enough couched in all these terms. Men, in 
the confidences of friendship, or by way of a 
sort of pastoral rebuke, not infrequently say to 
one another: "Surely you cannot hope for 
that." You ought to be more hopeful; or, It 
is useless or wrong for me to indulge this hope, 
these are admonitions which every wise man 
frequently enough addresses to his own soul. 
[38] 



LIMITATIONS OF HOPING 

And no language having reference to the varied 
experiences of hoping is more common than 
that which has reference to their propriety, or 
its opposite. Every one virtually admits that 
some hopes are antecedently reasonable; while 
others are from the very first quite certainly 
doomed to end in confusion and failure. Yet 
how often are the most obviously justifiable 
hopes the most bitterly disappointing; and, on 
the other hand, how, not so very infrequently, 
do the hopes which appeared most improbable 
and even wildest, lead to the most brilliant 
successes! In this way does experience of the 
results add to our difficulties when we attempt 
to define the rights and fix the limitations of 
the practical uses of the emotion of hoping. 

In spite of the intrinsic difficulties of the sub- 
ject, however, it would be a grave mistake to 
infer from the analysis of the nature and sources 
of this emotion, or from the practical issues of 
the different forms which the emotion takes, 
either its involuntary, and so non-moral, or its 
totally irrational character. To hope is not a 
merely mechanical and passive state of the soul. 
It is intimately connected with the active ex- 

[39] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

ercise of intellect and imagination under the 
control of will. Even the dependence of every 
individual's habits of hoping on his tempera- 
ment and on purely physical and physiological 
conditions, since this dependence is never from 
the first and wholly fixed, may be made to em- 
phasize the voluntary character of this emotion. 
Hopes, like all other forms of feeling, can be 
encouraged or discouraged, cherished or par- 
tially or wholly repressed. The very fact that 
we use such words as "encouraging" and 
"discouraging," "cherishing" and "repressing," 
"holding" and "banishing," shows how the 
popular estimate gives to the feeling a certain 
voluntary character. We do not, indeed, tend 
freely to denounce the hopes of others, unless 
they involve the avowed incitement to criminal 
action in the attempt at their realization. But 
we deprecate them in a way to attach a degree 
of responsibility on the part of those who, as 
the phrase is, insist on "entertaining" them. 
All such words and phrases we repeat 
imply some degree of rational control over his 
hopes on the part of every person who is sound 
in body and in mind. 
[40] 



LIMITATIONS OF HOPING 

But we are even more sure that the "rules 
of reason" apply to human hopes. If they 
have their rights and exalted uses, they have 
also their limitations; and these limitations 
must be discovered somewhere, not only within 
the domain of the intrinsically rational, but 
also within the confines of a world of things 
and men, constituted as this world is either 
known or credibly believed to be in fact con- 
stituted. For the essentially unreasonable, no 
rational being may venture to hope. For the 
essentially immoral, whether as end to be at- 
tained or as means necessary for the attain- 
ment of some other end, a moral being ought 
not to hope. With respect to their hopes the 
limits set by reason to the human race are 
indeed distant and hazy; they are less easy 
to descry or to predict than are either the 
limits of their knowledge or their beliefs. 
But all hopes must bear some valid relations 
to knowledge and to belief; and in view of 
this fact, nothing is surer in connection with 
the whole inquiry than that some hopes are 
unreasonable, however much we may be in 
doubt as to just where the dividing line should 

[41] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

be drawn between the reasonable and the un- 
reasonable. 

Any one attempting to throw much needed 
light upon the rights and limitations of the 
human (since universal and natural) emotion 
of hope the possession of the otherwise most 
poverty-stricken, the accompaniment of the 
criminal up to the very moment of execution, 
and the sustainer of the martyr's cheerful or 
joyful endurance until death must approach 
the subject with a due admixture of courage 
and of modesty. He cannot fail to see that 
certain kinds of hope have superior rights to a 
place in the conduct of the personal life. He 
cannot fail to be about equally sure that there 
are hopes which are essentially forbidden as 
destructive of the higher interests of the per- 
sonal life. It will be equally clear that both 
the nature of things and the nature of man 
credit some hopes with a good degree of as- 
surance; while the same environment throws 
its weight of testimony as to their reasonable- 
ness heavily against other classes of hopes, 
when indulged by the same humanity. It will, 
however, be constantly borne in mind how 

[42] 



LIMITATIONS OF HOPING 

especially difficult it is, in the case of this ex- 
pansive and complex but extremely useful emo- 
tion, to define the boundaries which separate 
the reasonable from the unreasonable, and 
which set the just and sane limitations of our 
hoping. 

To apprehend securely the main considera- 
tions which must be kept before us in the at- 
tempt to say anything practically helpful about 
the rights and limitations of hoping, a backward 
reference to the nature of the emotion itself 
is of the first account. The principal emo- 
tional factors of this attitude toward life and 
toward the good things of life were said to be 
these three: Desire, Expectation, and a certain 
feeling of confidence or Trust, corresponding on 
the affective side to intellectual belief. It was 
thought to be due to this usually unrecognized 
element, that Professor Bain considered he was 
scientifically exact in identifying Hope with a 
"certain kind" of belief. Let us now see 
whether this analysis may not be of some as- 
sistance in suggesting further details for the 
solution of the practical problem. 

Desire is the most immediately conspicuous 

[43] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

kind of feeling present in all activities of hoping. 
But about desires in general, three things may 
be said: (1) They all arise in natural appetencies 
and are directed toward certain forms of ex- 
perience which intellect and imagination have 
presented to the mind as something good; (2) 
while they all appeal to the will and tend to 
move it to an effort for their attainment, they 
are all also placed under the control of the will; 
and (3) they all, therefore, come to be classed 
under the head of the morally good and bad, as 
species of motives determining the values of 
character and conduct when viewed from the 
moral point of view. From this point of view 
it follows, then, that all hopes may be divided 
into the permissible and the impermissible, 
according to the moral character of the desire 
that prompts and controls them. Immoral 
desires can not give birth to morally permis- 
sible hopes. 

In this way, then, any honest man may derive 
a certain "must or must-not," as the answer to 
the inquiry, "May I or may I not?" cherish 
this particular hope; and in cherishing it, make 
its realization the object of my earnest en- 

[44] 



LIMITATIONS OF HOPING 

deavor. What may I hope? is the personal 
problem, with regard to this particular coveted 
form of good. There may be no logical un- 
reasonableness in the expectation; no foolish 
dreaming of unrealizable conditions in the con- 
fidence which the hope involves. On the 
contrary, the inferences which support the 
expectation may be logically correct and soundly 
derived from past knowledge of things and men; 
the trust may accord with the most verifiable 
of intellectual beliefs. There is, then, a high 
degree of probability in the feeling; I can in 
the future, if I so will and work, have that for 
which I now indulge the ardent desire. But, 
in spite of all that, the hope may be condemned 
to suppression and rejection by the steadfast 
will, on the ground of the immorality of the 
desire that gave it birth. Desires that do not 
accord with moral reason cannot take the form 
of hopes permissible to a being endowed with, 
and obligated by, the moral principles and moral 
ideals of personal life. 

The hopes of every form of covetous desire 
are, therefore, impermissible in the judgment 
of the moral, or so-called "practical" reason. 

[45] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

It is written, not only in the Law of Moses, 
but in the morals of all peoples and in the moral 
maxims of all religions, Confucian, Buddhist, 
Mohammedan, as well as Christian: "Thou 
shalt not (actively) covet thy neighbor's house, 
thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor 
his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his 
ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neigh- 
bor's." Thus is the axe laid at the very roots of 
the tree from which spring four-fifths of all the 
hopes disastrous to the social and moral welfare 
of mankind. The man who lusts after the wife 
of another man may not cherish the hope of 
some day winning possession of her. The mer- 
chant who actively covets the trade legitimately 
belonging to another may not hope to get the 
unfair advantage of that other. The dealer 
in false weights and measures, the manufac- 
turer of adulterated goods to which lying labels 
are attached, may not hope in this way to reach 
a coveted standard of financial prosperity. 
The ruler who indulges in ambitious dreams of 
world-empire, for the realization of which the 
forces of violence rather than the conquests of 
a peaceful righteousness are to be evoked, may 
[46] 



LIMITATIONS OF HOPING 

not indulge himself, or encourage in his people, 
the hopes that such dreams can in some way 
be realized. In general, the hopes born of 
avaricious and covetous desires are imper- 
missible. They have no legitimate rights in 
the domain of personal life and of worthy 
social development; they are barred from the 
claims of reasonable hopes by the fixed limita- 
tions of moral reason in its rule over human 
passions and desires. 

It is an undoubted fact of human history and 
of ever-present human experience that a large 
proportion, perhaps a majority, of the most 
powerful of the hopes which allure and control 
the struggles of men with nature and with one 
another, are of this morally impermissible char- 
acter. We are tempted then to ask: If the 
hopes which spring from covetousness were 
quite denied all right to existence; would not 
this put a fatal stop to all human endeavor, 
with its resulting conquest over nature and its 
beneficial selective influence in bringing about 
the survival of the fittest and the destruction 
of the weaker among mankind? In answering 
this question there must be no puttering with 

[47] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

the issue and no cowardly compromises. The 
answer of enlightened moral intuition, however 
backward in the arguments which the survey 
of history and the so-called sciences of eco- 
nomics, sociology, and politics, are accustomed 
to urge, is prompt and decisive to this question, 
in whatever concealed or illusory form it may 
be put. Moral reason asserts unqualifiedly the 
supremacy of the moral issue, and the incom- 
parable value of the moral ideals. In doing 
this, however, it distinctly aims to make itself 
reasonable. And as bearing on the correct and 
helpful solution of the practical question, 
What may I hope? it calls to mind such ex- 
planations and modifications as the following. 

All these covetous desires and ambitions, 
which are perpetually leading the individual 
and the race into immoral hopes and the con- 
tentions and crimes connected with such hopes, 
are perversions or distractions of quite legiti- 
mate forms of man's appetitive and impul- 
sively emotional nature. The desire of each 
sex for the other; the desire of something which 
the individual may call his own, his (proprius) 
property; a certain "thirst for the land"; the 

[48] 



LIMITATIONS OF HOPING 

desire that one's enterprises should succeed, 
that the thing "to which one has set one's 
hand" shall "prosper in one's hand"; the pa- 
triotic desire that one's country shall grow 
great in righteousness and in the peace of 
righteousness, all these are quite natural and 
lawful forms of desire. Without them, indeed, 
there could be no efficient motives to human 
endeavor in securing and improving the material 
basis of human welfare, or even of human 
existence. 

It must also be admitted that there is a 
legitimate development of morals, as the prac- 
tical result of the development of the moral 
ideals and the increase of experience as to the 
most effective ways of securing their even 
partial realization. But all this makes even 
more unjustifiable and contemptible the spe- 
cious arguments that are put forth to legiti- 
matize and defend]the indulgence of hopes based 
on covetous desires and immoral ambitions. 
How fictitious beliefs are made to support 
immoral hopes, there are not wanting illustra- 
tions of the most extreme examples taken from 
the most recent times. "In the present inter- 

[49] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

course of the so-called 'superior races' with 
those whom they choose to call 'inferior,' there 
is testimony, though of a mixed pathetic and 
ludicrous character, that the former are begin- 
ning again to raise the debate whether the latter 
are indeed 'human' in the fullest sense of the 
word. Those whom greed and revenge prompt 
the enlightened (sic) of the race to treat as though 
they were not men, the enlightened will try to 
make out really are not men. It would not 
be civilized (not to say Christian) to harry 
and hunt men like squirrels and rabbits, or 
tigers and wolves ("Philosophy of Conduct," 
p. 329). And what an awful picture of mental 
aberration and of the defeat of all the world's 
most precious ethical standards has the recent 
era of Christian civilization shown to be com- 
mended by inferences framed to justify the 
hopes that have been fostered by immoral 
ambitions and desires! 

When, however, we consider these desires 
as the sources of some of the dearest and 
sweetest hopes of the individual and of society, 
how different is the picture presented by the 
intellect and the imagination quite in spite 

[50] 



LIMITATIONS OF HOPING 

of its often illusory and dreamlike character 
for moral approval and support. Honorable 
desires are not impermissible, even if they so 
often lead to disappointed hopes. The honest 
lover may be permitted the somewhat extrava- 
gant hope that he will find his mistress, when he 
more fully finds her out, endowed with alto- 
gether superior qualities of body, mind, and 
heart. And the returning hope of the woman 
may be permitted somewhat to overstep the 
bounds of probability in the degree of her trust 
in the man she has promised to make her hus- 
band. This temporary delusion which the 
"will to live" perpetuates in them both should, 
if the two are honest and fair-minded souls, as 
they are morally bound to be, sustain the shock 
of disillusionment, and assist both in bearing 
together the common burdens of then* daily 
life. For this first not quite reasonable hope is 
partially disappointed only to be replaced by 
other and perhaps more reasonable and lasting 
hopes. The man who engages in trade or in 
manufacture must be allured to his undertak- 
ings by a hope which in nine cases out of ten 
is not fully realized, as the proportion of 

[51] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

bankruptcies to successes shows only too clearly. 
But without these semi-illusory hopes, all do- 
mestic and business enterprises would be sub- 
stantially checked, if they were not indeed quite 
brought to an end. And as to the benefits as 
well as necessity of hopes that transcend the 
probable we might almost say, the possible, 
for all social and political reformers, there 
can scarcely be any doubt. 

There is another kind of impermissible hopes 
which spring from desires less conspicuously 
immoral than the class which we have just been 
considering; but which are almost as mis- 
chievous and but little less universal. These 
may be called the passive hopes of the self- 
indulgent and the lazy. The average tramp 
and "hooligan" is, when not feigning grief or 
despondency, a very hopeful individual. Some- 
thing will turn up, or fall into his hand, before 
his unsatisfied desires become intolerable. And 
what more intolerable for him than to assist in 
a laborious way in the fulfilment of his own 
reasonable hopes? As says the Bhagavad 
Git a: "When one person suffers the conse- 
quences of his acts, should his fellow-brothers 

[52] 



LIMITATIONS OF HOPING 

stand by and enjoy the spectacle? Certainly 
not. They should, led by feelings of universal 
fellowship, do their duty disinterestedly to- 
ward the person suffering." The ethical maxim 
selected by the indolent man for application to 
his desires as looking toward others, but not to 
the desires of others as directed toward himself, 
lays the foundations of hopes according to the 
morality of the Bhagavad Gfta. But we have 
no right to hopes, even in themselves coupled 
with legitimate desires, unless we propose to 
do our own part bravely and self-sacrificingly, 
toward their fulfilment. 

We may not then ourselves indulge, or en- 
courage others in indulging, hope of the grati- 
fication of desire at the enforced expense of 
others, when we are at the same time lazily 
indulging ourselves in leisure, and trusting to 
others for doing for us our part in the effort at 
realizing the hope. The positive side of this 
consideration calls our attention to the almost 
limitless possibilities which lie open to the soul 
of a strenuous nature when inspired by pas- 
sionate desire to realize some coveted good. It 
is difficult, it is practically impossible, by any 

[53] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

process of reasoning or appeal to past experi- 
ence, precisely to set limits to hoping, if only 
the desires out of which they spring and on 
which they feed are morally permissible. 

But there are other kinds of rights which 
may be assigned to certain hopes and denied 
to others; and there are other kinds of limita- 
tions than the strictly moral, to* the permis- 
sibility of hoping. These are the rights which 
must be acquired by an intelligent apprecia- 
tion of the facts and laws of man's physical and 
social environment; these are the limitations 
which careful observation and sound inference 
put upon intellectual vagaries and upon the 
dreams of undisciplined and foolhardy imagi- 
nation. Both the rights and the limitations 
of this sort have their chief reference to that 
feeling of expectation which we have already 
seen to be one of the three principal emotional 
elements of all the active and passive states of 
hope. The expectations of our hopes must 
have some degree of sweet reasonableness. 
Otherwise they have no right to solicit and 
command the will. To hope for the totally 
unreasonable is not permissible for a person, 

[54] 



LIMITATIONS OF HOPING 

that is, for a being whose nature it is to be 
rational. Even the faintest hopes for the 
most improbable of future good things should 
have some ground in the present possession of 
right reason; they should be subject to some 
limitations set to them by past experience. 
The hopes of the fanatic and of the insane are 
not permissible for the man of reasonable mind. 
Now, while few or none would dispute the 
very sage statements in which we have just 
indulged, there is no task more difficult, whether 
it be presented to the claimant for the title of 
psychological expert or to the man who, in his 
distrust of all such sort of pseudo-science, relies 
upon his own infallible common-sense, than 
just this : to determine what hopes are rea- 
sonable, and what not. For every form of 
human activity has strewn all along the course 
of its development, on the left hand, hopes 
once esteemed most sure of success, because 
entertained by the minds and supported by 
the energies of the wise and the mighty, but 
which now lie broken and dismembered; and 
on the right hand, are fair and stalwart forms of 
recognized force and authority, which have 

[55] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

been fed on hopes that seemed at first, of all 
kindred hopes, about the most puny and un- 
worthy of nourishing. The hopes of the 
mighty lie low; the hopes of the humble and 
lowly have become mighty and highly exalted. 
Towers of Babel, that were to defy the floods 
of Heaven, are buried in sand; impregnable 
strongholds are reduced to small piles of ruins; 
colossal fortunes and empires which those who 
reared them hoped, most reasonably, to leave 
to their descendants, are utterly dissipated or 
have passed into the hands of strangers. But 
the dreams, deemed wildest, of science, of 
philanthropists, and of religious reformers, 
have at the last come true. Society is solidly 
built upon them. 

The method of all this passage from the pres- 
ent and the past to the future, by way of ex- 
pectancy, which is sometimes a method of 
sanity and sometimes seemingly a method of 
madness, needs a few words of explanation. It 
is by what logic calls "making inferences" that 
we come to expect future events to be of such, 
or such another, character. Where our data 
are quite certain and based on plenty of cred- 

[561 



LIMITATIONS OF HOPING 

ible experiences, and where the inferences are 
able to proceed along fairly direct lines, and 
to lean heavily on the arm of mathematics 
strengthened by the frequent testing of experi- 
mentation, we anticipate the future event in 
the most confident way. We do not say we 
hope for it; we say, the rather, that we confi- 
dently expect it, and we build our more doubt- 
ful hopes upon this expectation. The Chinese 
mandarin, who knows enough of modern sci- 
ence confidently to expect the eclipse at the 
appointed hour, may, since he shares the su- 
perstitions of the rest of his benighted country- 
men, only faintly hope somehow to avert the 
calamity to himself and them which be believes 
the event to portend. 

But most of the future we do not know in 
this lofty a priori scientific way. Indeed, the 
most important advances of science have not 
been obtained by processes of inference like 
that just described. They have been due, the 
rather, to guesses, to flashes of insight, which 
excited hopes that it required long and costly 
processes of trying them out, in order to con- 
vert them, first, into assured hopes, and then 

[57] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

into the confident expectations from which 
scientific prediction proceeds. 

No man can, however, live by science, chiefly 
or alone. The few eccentric individuals who 
make a conspicuous boast of doing it, are, as 
a rule, either conspicuously hopeless in many of 
the most important relations of life, or conspic- 
uously liable to disappointment of their most 
cherished hopes. For the hopes that deter- 
mine life are, quite without exception, based on 
beliefs and faiths that, however truly reason- 
able they may be, cannot claim scientific accu- 
racy. Marriages are contracted, children are 
born and nurtured, youth grows to maturity, 
grows old and dies, all directed and con- 
trolled by probable beliefs, and by the hopes 
which such beliefs engender and support. 
Neither science nor complete scepticism, nei- 
ther assured predictions as to the future nor 
hopelessness as to the future, suffices for the 
safe conduct of life. What is true for every 
individual is true for all nations as well. 

The answer to the inquiry, What may I 
hope? must then insist on the obligation to 
make, as far as possible, each hope a reasonable 

[58] 



LIMITATIONS OF HOPING 

hope. And the only way to secure this kind of 
reasonableness is to connect the realization of 
the hope in the future, by a bond of trustworthy 
inference, to the present status of this par- 
ticular hope, and to the maxims derived from 
experiences of hopings of the same general 
character. In a word, one is under obligations 
to use one's mind in judgment as to whether 
one's hopes are indeed reasonable; that is, 
whether the expectation which is in them, and 
which is an essential part of them, is fairly 
credible, because it is fairly probable. It is 
the word of wisdom: Try to secure for hope 
the degree of reasonableness, the lack of which 
would render the hope impermissible. In this 
way the chastening of wisdom is brought to 
bear on vain or exaggerated hopes. All such 
advice is confessedly vague enough. It can 
be given suitable concrete application, only as 
it is worked over by the mind, and incorporated 
into the purpose, of the individual who desires 
to make use of it. Nothing is more hopeless 
than the attempt to disabuse another of his 
hopes, although they are esteemed vain and 
foolish by us; unless it be to make ourselves 

[59] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

honestly inclined to disabuse ourselves of our 
own most vain and foolish hopes. 

In spite, however, of a certain helplessness 
which every one must feel who attempts to ad- 
minister the bitter medicine that is purgative 
of unreasonable hopes, there are valuable rules 
governing this kind of thankless practice that 
it is convenient for the attending physician to 
bear in mind. The mistaken claim to a right 
to hope, in expectation of this or that future 
good, and the mischievous transgression of the 
limits of a reasonable hoping, generally arise 
from the individual's believing that some 
special exception to the laws of the physical 
universe or of society will be made in his par- 
ticular case. Is it not reasonable for the fa- 
vorites of high Heaven to hope as other and 
ordinary mortals would not dare to hope? 
This is the hope of the megalomaniac. It may 
be a mild case, scarcely passing the limits 
of a modest self-confidence. It may be that 
of the braggart prize-fighter or the boastful 
emperor. It may be that of the prince of 
finance, or the captain of some form of industry. 
It is that of the man who has forgotten to 

[601 



LIMITATIONS OF HOPING 

"walk humbly before God"; of him who has 
trodden the heights of insolence, where the 
divine Nemesis is watching for the unwary. 
Or it may be no more uncommon or pretentious 
than are the emotional attitudes toward life, of 
the thousands of giddy and thoughtless souls on 
whose "innocent" but futile hopings, the kindly 
wise old men and women smile benignantly. 

But we must at once remind ourselves, as a 
safeguard against a more than divine attitude 
of severity toward all such hopes as can never 
reasonably expect fulfilment, that the world 
owes much, owes its perpetually renewing sal- 
vation, to the not altogether "reasonable" 
hopes of the young and the sanguine. For the 
relations of human actions to future conse- 
quences never have been, and probably never 
will be, Yes ! from the very nature of the 
case, never can be, reduced to a mechanical 
system of strictly demonstrable order. The 
hopes of the inventor, of the discoverer, of the 
reformer, of the prophet of religion, have al- 
ways been the hopes of the sanguine; not in- 
frequently, they have seemed to the men of 
their generation, as the hopes of children. 

[611 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

We cannot, then, find the same denial of 
rights, the same claims to strict limitations, in 
respect to the credibility of the expectations of 
hope, which we had no difficulty in discovering 
with respect to the morality of the desires which 
prompt the activity of hoping. Certain inno- 
cent but very vague and illusory hopes, which 
become the springs of much valuable and fruit- 
ful activity, and which contribute many bene- 
ficial results, though by no means always of the 
exact type of the expectations that are in them, 
are permissible. They have their place in the 
economy of existence. They may be em- 
ployed as means to the development of the 
personal life. And, indeed, is not all human 
life in some sort a scheme of Divine illusion 
designed to secure as its end a yet more glori- 
ous form of Reality? 

The raising of this last issue, however, in- 
volves a distinction in human hopes, to which 
reference has more than once been made al- 
ready, but the detailed development of which 
is absolutely necessary for any even partially 
satisfactory answer of the question, What may 
I hope? This is the distinction between the 

[62] 



LIMITATIONS OF HOPING 

lesser and the greater hopes; and this distinc- 
tion culminates in the recognition of certain 
hopes as of the very most essential characteris- 
tics of the personal and spiritual life. 

To be a person at all the individual man 
must have certain beliefs; and to develop his 
personality in social relations and only in 
social relations can personality be developed 
he must cultivate and act under the guidance of 
these beliefs. To be the person that every 
individual man ought to be, and to advance 
toward the goal of this personal life in the 
spirit of cheer and undaunted courage, the 
individual man needs to secure, to cherish, and 
to cling to, certain hopes. These hopes have 
to do with the ideals of the personal life, in the 
individual and in the race. They are the hopes 
of the spirit that is in every man; but they 
are also the hopes of humanity. They have, 
therefore, peculiar rights as they appear before 
the will for its acceptance and devoted service; 
but even they are not without certain limita- 
tions. What those hopes are; what are the 
obligations which they impose upon the soul 
and what are the rewards which they offer; 

[63] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

and under what limitations they must be ac- 
cepted and cherished; these are the inquiries 
which are of all most important for the an- 
swer of the practical question, What may I 
hope? "A man," said Goethe, "must cling 
to the belief that the incomprehensible is com- 
prehensible; otherwise, he would not try to 
fathom it." A man must cling to the hopes 
which such beliefs warrant and support; other- 
wise he forfeits the choicest rewards of all 
human hoping. But of all other hopes except 
those that hang on these beliefs, the words of 
the experiences in all ages are embodied in the 
Arab proverb: "This world is a bridge; pass 
thou over it; but do not build upon it." 



[64] 



CHAPTER III 

THE ASSURANCE OF HOPE 

'N somewhat the same way as reasonable 
belief is to be distinguished from supersti- 
tion, so is reasonable hope ("hope that 
maketh not ashamed") to be distinguished 
from that which is vain and illusory. It is 
also true that in somewhat the same way as the 
strength of the belief furnishes a very effective 
evidence for the reasonableness of his belief 
to the man who holds it, so does the assurance 
of hoping give much additional testimony to the 
reasonableness of the hope for the mind that 
entertains it. In both cases, a certain value, 
which is something more than purely "subjec- 
tive," cannot easily be denied to this support 
of truth in a form that is primarily emotional. 
It is more reasonable to believe what one can 
honestly believe with a strong feeling of confi- 
dence in its "objective" truthfulness. It is 
more reasonable to hope what one can honestly 
hope with a large measure of firm assurance. 

[65] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

Nor is this measure of emotional evidence to 
be esteemed as of value to those only who store 
it in their own bosoms. Beliefs and hopes that 
are kept ever warm and vital in the bosom of 
humanity, by being near to its heart and source 
of vital life-currents, are lawfully as well as 
actually most well nourished and most vigorous. 

The truth of this contention is established 
even by the self-deceits, hypocrisies, and false- 
hoods, which take refuge under its cloak. It is 
for this reason that we so often encounter the 
distressing spectacle of men "whipping them- 
selves up," as the saying is, into a fine frenzy of 
protestation over the strength of some belief 
which, in fact, they have come only doubtfully 
to hold; or into vehement assertion of their 
confidence in some hope which, in fact, is just 
on the point of slipping quite away from them. 
Not only in theological opinion, but also and 
no less conspicuously, in science, in politics, 
and in morals, it is not infrequently those who 
are just on the borderland of heresy, that pro- 
test their orthodoxy in the most uncompromis- 
ing form. The really penitent thief ventured 
only to pray, "Remember me when thou comest 

[66] 



THE ASSURANCE OF HOPE 

into thy kingdom"; and he was silently satis- 
fied with the hope which sprung from faith in 
the crucified one by his side. But your really 
unrepentant scoundrel boasts from the scaffold 
his newly acquired hope of salvation; or like 
the dying Empress Dowager of China ends a 
life of horrid crimes with a proclamation of 
intention to ascend to heaven, clothed in 
majestic raiment and mounted upon a dragon. 
It would be sad misinterpretation, however, 
of the value, in its own right, which belongs to 
confidence in the truthfulness of certain faiths, 
and the assurance of the hopes connected with 
them, if we were led to distrust, not to say 
despise, all this class of phenomena on account 
of the mixing of a large proportion of the 
spurious with that which is most genuine. At 
any rate, and growing out of the very nature 
of the case: Belief is not belief, without some 
backing of trust behind it, some foundation of 
confidence underneath it. Hope is not hope, 
without some measure of assurance, somehow 
derived. Beliefs are not efficient in human 
affairs, much less are they triumphant over 
obstacles and mighty for the pulling down of 

[67] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

the strongholds of error, unless they are them- 
selves firmly bedded in the minds and ex- 
periences of those who profess them. Hopes 
cannot lift up the individuals and the nations 
which cherish them, unless they are themselves 
well-grounded in the assurance of their own 
reasonableness. The anchor of hope "let go," 
must find bottom and hold, or it is of no avail 
as an anchor. How then can it be maintained 
that the emotional element of trust which enters 
into certain faiths and hopes of the individual 
and of the race is without evidential value? 
On the contrary, the assurance of hope is char- 
acteristic of every reasonable and steadfast 
form of the emotion of hoping. 

On the other hand, to assume that we may 
safely measure the reasonableness of any in- 
dividual's hoping, or of any individual hope, 
solely by the strength of the assurance with 
which it is held, would be an even more foolish 
and grievous mistake than altogether to dis- 
credit the value of the element of assurance. 
We have already had occasion to discuss this 
aspect of our mental attitudes in its relation 
to the distinction between knowing and believ- 

[68] 



THE ASSURANCE OF HOPE 

ing, under the topic, "Being Sure of What We 
Know." It was then pointed out: "There is 
no absolutely sure passage either for the indi- 
vidual or for the race, from subjective convic- 
tion to objective certainty. Conviction will 
always vary in its intensity and steadiness, 
according to the nature and mental habits of 
the subject whose conviction it is, and accord- 
ing to the subject about which the conviction 
is exercised. On the other hand, the certainty 
which is attached, or which can reasonably be 
attached, to any form of knowledge, or to any 
particular knowledge-judgment, is no fixed 

affair. 



Somewhat similar criticism must be made 
with respect to the Kantian distinction between 
believing and knowing. . . . His principle of 
division was just this 'certainty' which was 
somehow supposed to be added to believing in 
order to convert it into knowing. But the 
distinction, when made in so rough and bald a 
manner, is psychologically false. . . . Indeed, 
whenever the assurance of belief attains a cer- 
tain degree of intensity and a quality of steadi- 

[69] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

ness of character, we speak of it as knowledge. 
On the other hand, when assurance begins to 
show dim, or to withdraw its support from our 
judgment, we begin to question whether what 
we thought knowledge is anything more certain 
than a doubtful belief. But we are just as 
ready to say that we do not believe in that 
way any longer." ("What Can I Know?" pp. 
96 ff.) 

The close connection between our beliefs and 
our hopes has already been made apparent. 
Indeed, the chief if not the only sources of our 
hopes, properly so-called, are to be found in 
our beliefs. When we really know what is to 
happen to our desires in the future, we either 
drop the expectation out of the state of hoping 
altogether, or else we give to it the perfection 
and definiteness of content which is necessary 
to convert it into a scientific prediction. In 
either case, our mental attitude loses much, if 
not all, of those affective factors which are 
essential to the complex emotion of hoping. 
From this connection between believing 
merely believing, without positively knowing 
and hoping, in the more genuine and im- 

[70] 



THE ASSURANCE OF HOPE 

pressive meaning of that word, we may suggest 
a similar doctrine of tests for the assurance, or 
element of confidence, which belongs to both 
these related attitudes of mind. 

We return then to the thought of that per- 
missive nature of hope, which renders it right, 
in the sense of being both reasonable and 
moral, to let our hopes extend beyond our as- 
sured knowledge and our indubitable beliefs. 
Even more are we entitled, in the assurance of 
hope, to transcend the arguments derived by 
the strictest processes of demonstration from 
the principles established by the methods of the 
exact sciences; if this can be done without 
contradicting or corrupting those principles. 
Every man, when pressed by the more cruel 
experiences of this earthly life, is likely some- 
time to come to the critical position when he 
must say to himself: "I cannot live in a manner 
worthy of the ideals of morality and religion, 
and so as to secure the most precious values of 
the personal being which I know myself to be, 
unless I may hope with a good degree of assur- 
ance for some things which are intellectually 
secured by only strongly contested beliefs." 

[71] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

This necessity, which is not merely a practical 
makeshift, or merely a pretence of pragmatic 
philosophy, but a relation between the different 
forms of activity and of passion that consti- 
tute the very essence of personal life, is a 
rational justification for the assurance of certain 
hopes. 

The modifications of all this doctrine of the 
assurance of hope, with its assignment of ob- 
jective value to the subjective emotion, have 
already been rather fully suggested in the 
treatment of the nature and sources of hope, 
and of the rights and limitations of the activity 
of hoping. 

As an important part of the practical ques- 
tion, What may I hope? the wise man will be 
constantly asking himself, How may I avoid 
the fool's hopes? Foolish hopes, he well knows, 
are often characterized by the highest degree 
of the most stubborn but unreasonable assur- 
ance. Who, that is wise, would not have 
fewer and less highly strung hopes rather than 
have so many hopes that in the end make one 
ashamed, or even lead to one's destruction? 
But who can afford to dispense with all the 



THE ASSURANCE OF HOPE 

hopes that do not admit of having their assur- 
ance warranted by the indisputable processes 
of logic; and who can endure a hopeless life 
long enough to put the assurance of some of 
his most precious hopes to the waiting test of 
their actual fulfilment? We cannot wholly 
escape hopes that will turn out to have been 
illusory, and to have had only the value of 
leading us on to exertions which would not 
otherwise have been made, by arguing away or 
completely surrendering all our natural rights 
of hoping. We cannot at least, in youth and 
prosperity we cannot confine all uplifting 
emotions of this class to a sort of dull "hoping 
against hope." It is not thus that success in 
any form of life is ever to be won. 

Is not man, then, involved in a paradox with 
respect to this wholly natural and unavoidable 
habit of hoping, as curious as it is perplexing? 
Let the paradox be stated as follows: Without 
some assurance, no hoping; without much as- 
surance, or a large degree of sentimental con- 
viction, no fine and high hopes, none of the 
hopes that save the soul of the individual and 
allure to its uplifting the race of men. With 

[73] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

too much "cock-sureness" in hoping comes the 
degradation and destruction of false and de- 
lusive hopes; with too much rationalizing of 
hopes, they vanish or are so thinned out, as it 
were, as to lose most of their robustness and 
efficiency for reform. How shall such a paradox 
admit of practical solution? And are we not, 
after all, asking ourselves the question, What 
may I (reasonably) hope? altogether in vain? 

It would be, indeed, a sad ending to the in- 
quiry, What may I hope? to discover that, with 
a view to avoiding the hopes of the fool, the wise 
man must not, with any degree of assurance, 
hope at all. But to say this very thing in some 
sort has often been esteemed the highest de- 
gree of wisdom. Thus saith the Buddha: 

"Through birth and re-birth's endless round, 
Seeking in vain, I hastened on, 
To find who framed this edifice. 
What misery! birth incessantly! 

"O builder! I've discovered thee! 
This fabric thou shalt ne'er rebuild! 

Thy rafters all are broken now, 

And pointed roof demolished lies! 

This mind has demolition reached. 
And seen the last of all desire!" 

[74] 



THE ASSURANCE OF HOPE 

It is not, however, by "the demolition of the 
mind" and "the extinction of all desire" that 
the foolishness of human hopes is to be success- 
fully thwarted or finally defeated. The best of 
human hopes must be assured of their "reason- 
ableness," in the better meaning of the latter 
word. 

There are two considerations by which, if 
we most jealously guard and diligently regu- 
late our hopes, we shall secure in general a 
reasonable assurance for the best of them, and 
escape the follies of the hopes that are essen- 
tially vain and delusive. The first of these is 
this: No assurance can be allowed by moral 
reason to hopes that spring from covetous and 
selfish desires. He, then, who would avoid 
vain and foolish hopes must look well to the 
essential morality of the appetencies and am- 
bitions on which his hopes are founded. Es- 
sentially immoral hopes are essentially foolish 
hopes. 

Many, perhaps the majority, of covetous 
desires can, not infrequently, justify their train 
of hopes by satisfactory arguments as to the 
high degree of the chances favoring their future 

[75] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

realization. Thus, though unreasonable from 
the moral point of view, they are made to ap- 
pear highly reasonable from the point of view 
which defines their probability. If one dares 
incur the moral risk of cherishing such hopes, 
one may be comparatively brave in inferring 
the chances of their futurity. To say this is, 
indeed, to seem to contradict some of the most 
widely accepted of the maxims of antiquity, as 
well as not a few of the declarations and warn- 
ings of Sacred Scripture. For these maxims 
and declarations assign the ultimate profits to 
persistent righteousness. But, in spite of all 
seeming, to give greater weight to merely pru- 
dential considerations than to moral ideals is 
to accept the facts of life at their face value; 
but only at their "face" value. In fact, the 
chances of a man's becoming rich, or politically 
or socially successful, or powerful, or of having 
any other form of similar desires gratified, are 
to-day, as they have always been, rather better, 
if he is by no means scrupulous as to the moral 
character of the desires themselves or as to the 
methods employed to secure their realization. 
He who enters business, or politics, or society, 
[76] 



THE ASSURANCE OF HOPE 

or even the work of some educational or relig- 
ious institution, with the intention of maintain- 
ing over his desires the control of even a fairly 
lofty ethical standard, does well not to be much 
puffed up with assurance for his hope of success, 
as measured by the customary standards. He 
must, on the contrary, be prepared to appear 
very frequently as a "fool" in the estimate of 
his rivals; and quite as frequently called one, 
behind his back if not before his face. Have 
we not cheerfully admitted that the "face" 
value of the facts seems to favor the opinion 
that it is foolish to hope to realize the natural 
desires that are too much infected with the 
limitations of moral principles. In the marts 
and social circles, in the Governments of na- 
tions, and even in the universities and the 
churches, there is still, as there has ever 
been, an under-current of distrust, if not 
a strong surface current of contempt, for the 
regulation of solid earthly hopes in accord- 
ance with the cloudy follies of moral ideal- 
ism. One must be willing to be called a 
"God's fool," in order to gain the firm assur- 
ance which, in the realms of the higher rea- 

[77] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

son, belongs of incontestable right to certain 
hopes. 

But is the man really a fool who, in respect 
of the assurance of his hopes, makes first ac- 
count of the wise endeavor to ascertain whether 
those hopes are founded in morally permissible 
desires; and who, in the efforts to realize his 
hopes, will not be diverted from the rules of 
right conduct as prescribed by moral reason? 
What person, with a wise mind and a heart 
loyal to the most precious and profound of 
personal sentiments, can for an instant hesitate 
as to the answer to be given to such a question 
as this? "If this is to be a fool, then a fool I 
will be"; so great is the assurance of my hope 
that the final issue of fidelity to moral reason 
will vindicate all the faithful against any 
charge of folly which may be encountered along 
the way. Indeed, the surest way to avoid 
vain hopes, and to secure the assurance which 
belongs of right only to the hopes that are es- 
sentially reasonable, is morally to purify the 
desires from which the hopes arise. 

But some intellectually timid or cowardly ob- 
jector will say: How shall I, antecedently to 

[78] 



THE ASSURANCE OF HOPE 

experience of my own, and in view of the con- 
fusion of opinions as to the morals of trade, 
politics, social intercourse, and the conduct of 
educational and religious affairs, discover what 
are the morally permissible hopes; and, more 
especially, what are the morally permissible 
ways of attempting to realize such hopes? For, 
what is more debatable than morals? What is 
more ineffective than exhortation and instruc- 
tion to secure right morals for the young human 
being, previous to some personal experience of 
the consequences of his own bad or injudicious 
conduct? There is force in this objection. 
And he who undertakes to answer for himself 
or for others the question, What may I hope? 
is sure sooner or later to feel its force. It is 
not an altogether easy thing for one who is in- 
telligently and unswervingly committed to the 
resolve that he will not be guilty of the folly of 
cherishing morally impermissible hopes, always 
to avoid being foolish in the indulgence and 
active realization of his most virtuous hopings. 
It is not easy, it is not possible, to be infallible 
in our hopes; any more, but even less, than 
in our other emotional and practical attitudes 

[79] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

toward life and its successful conduct. But it 
is not required that we should be infallible. 
In respect of our hopings, it is probably far from 
desirable that we should attempt infallibility. 
Some of the most valuable and inspiring of hu- 
man hopes are most distant and long-deferred 
in their realization. If one pleases to call them 
illusory, as we do not, much preferring to 
call them "educatory," still they are alto- 
gether worthy of every one who aspires to the 
values of personal life, maintaining an unbroken 
and undying grasp upon them. 

But the objector to the hopes founded in the 
confidence of moral reason, on the ground of 
their uncertainty, ought to know that there is 
nothing given to any man to trust, with refer- 
ence to which he may come nearer to a practi- 
cal infallibility than his moral intuitions and 
judgments; if only he will cultivate the 
habit of keeping them incorrupt, and of obey- 
ing them. All inferences, and all the intellec- 
tual beliefs on which such inferences are based, 
as to the ultimate profit of cherishing immoral 
desires, and as to the chances of realizing the 
hopes which are founded upon them, are far 

[80] 



THE ASSURANCE OF HOPE 

more subject to fickleness and to fallibility, 
than are the fundamental moral intuitions and 
moral judgments. So then, if one must such 
are the inescapable conditions of man's life and 
of its environment incur no small risk of 
folly as touching the assurance of one's hopes, 
the chances of escaping the maximum of foolish 
mistakes are on the side of him who sticks to 
the assurance of the hopes that are morally 
permissible. Most of the worst fools in the 
world are those who have relied on the satis- 
faction of the expectations that take counsel 
of impermissible desires; even when they make 
a brave show of proving to themselves by 
a crafty logic or a confident appeal to the ex- 
ample of others, that the hopes engendered by 
such desires are entirely practicable. 

There are certain hopes, however, which 
one may entertain with calm assurance, and 
cherish, and hold to with tenacity of fearless- 
ness lest at last they should convict one of folly. 
There are desires and expectations and trusts, 
out of which one may skilfully compound a 
fragrant and wholesome mixture for a timorous 
and fainting soul. And this brings us to the 

[81] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

second of the considerations which promise 
help in escaping the foolishness of reposing in 
unreasonable hopes. He who lives in the as- 
surance of the hopes that spring from moral 
Idealism is never quite a fool. These hopes 
find their solid ground in the fundamental and 
undaunted faiths of morality and religion. 
These faiths guarantee the verity, the supreme 
value, and the ultimate triumph, of the moral 
ideals. They who hold these faiths base upon 
them the assurance of the hopes which foresee 
their fulfilment in the future of the individual 
and of the race. 

As to times, and degrees, and ways, the 
hopes of moral Idealism are indeed often enough 
disappointed. Often enough the time of the 
fulfilment of the prophecy born of this kind of 
hope, whether it be of schemes for the im- 
provement of society, or for the abolition of 
ancient wrongs, or for the securing of hitherto 
unrecognized rights, is long deferred. The 
eye of the man or of the generation which has 
cherished the hope of the idealist never beholds 
the full realization of its heart's desire. The 
fullest measure of this manner of hoping is sel- 

[82] 



THE ASSURANCE OF HOPE 

dom or never realized. Perhaps such hoping 
can never be fully realized under earthly con- 
ditions; for it is of the very nature of moral 
ideals to outstrip the efforts which it is possible 
to make, and the means which it is possible to 
assemble, for their realization. Oftener than 
not, it may be, the very measures employed to 
remove the evils which stand in the way of the 
fulfilment of these ideals, develop other and 
unexpected evils, which must become new sub- 
jects for hopeful attack in the name of the 
same essentially unchanging ideals. And yet 
the soul that remains faithful to its moral 
ideals is unconvicted of essential folly. 

How the claim just made can be put on a 
somewhat reasonable basis, or at any rate be- 
come in the mind of him who makes it a more 
assured ground for hope, will require some de- 
tailed examination of the particular hopes which 
are entitled to make the claim. But the fun- 
damental truth applying to them all is in the 
fact that the convictions attaching to the hopes 
born of moral ideals carry so much of evidence 
with them, whenever and wherever they fasten 
upon the human spirit. They bear the mark 

[83] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

of the not-to-be-questioned authority of the 
Spirit from which they come, and to whose 
presence in the spirit of man and in the race 
they furnish an indubitable witness. Even to 
the onlooker, from the coldest and most non- 
sentimental and purely intellectual point of 
view, the self-evidencing authority of these 
hopes is worthy of no small regard. Men do 
in spite of all their particular disappoint- 
ments, as respects times, degrees, and ways of 
fulfilment cling, with on the whole increasing 
intelligence and without diminishing tenacity, 
to the hopes born of the faiths of morality and 
religion. The best of the race share in the 
vision of Thoreau, when he says: "I see laws 
which never fail, of whose failure I never con- 
ceived. Indeed, I can not detect failure any- 
where but in my fear. I do not fear that right 
is not right, that good is not good." 

In this connection it is pertinent to refer to 
the fact that, although the assurance of hope 
can never be based on grounds other than those 
afforded by some degree of knowledge, or 
more often of reasonable belief, hope is 
essentially optimistic. In the debates between 

[84] ' 



THE ASSURANCE OF HOPE 

the various forms of Optimism and Pessimism 
so-called, the hopes of men are ranged on the 
side of the former. But there is truth in what 
Eucken has said: "Of old, it has not been the 
optimists but the pessimists that can boast of 
the better knowledge of human nature." Such 
a seeming confusion can be cleared up only by 
understanding what we mean by the two words, 
so frequently misunderstood, so almost univer- 
sally misused. 

In the popular disputation it is often enough 
that the hopeful promoter of some speculative 
interest, or the enthusiastic but not well-in- 
formed patriot (?) who is boasting of his coun- 
try's prowess in war or superiority over other 
countries in the commerce and arts of peace, 
or even the devotee who is confident of the 
ability of the positive sciences to abolish the 
evils and secure the economic and sanitary 
redemption of mankind, brings against those 
who do; not altogether share the fulness of his 
confidence, the railing or the benignant charge 
of pessimism. With the over-confident hoper, 
it is invariably ascribed to pessimistic tenden- 
cies that others do not share his hopes. With 

[85] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

the sanguine man, such pessimism implies no 
small degree of either judicial blindness or 
moral obliquity. 

Now it is apparent to any one who has fol- 
lowed the course of our thought concerning the 
rights and limitations of hoping, and concern- 
ing the nature of the grounds on which the as- 
surance of hope must justify itself, if it finds 
any justification at all, it is apparent, I say, 
that the use of such words as Optimism and 
Pessimism has no value in the determination 
of the reasonableness of the assurance of many 
kinds of hopes. For such hopes cannot claim 
the warrant of moral reason or the support of 
moral ideals. If, on the other hand, they are 
entertained in defiance of the laws and ideals 
of the moral life, they are just as impermissible, 
whether they are considered in respect to the 
probability of their fulfilment, from the so- 
called optimistic or the so-called pessimistic 
point of view. He is in no sense a "pessimist" 
who refuses to entertain immoral or unreason- 
able hopes. 

There is, however, a much larger field, the 
surveying of which is apt to be strongly influ- 

[86] 



THE ASSURANCE OF HOPE 

enced either by the optimism of hope, or by 
the pessimism which is inevitable as a result of 
a too inconclusive and an ideally unsupported 
inference from facts. Whether the world is 
really growing better, or not, is a question 
which can scarcely be raised at all, without 
exciting a volley of epithets in which "opti- 
mistic" and "pessimistic" are conspicuous 
words. But this is a question, the meaning of 
which can not be apprehended, and much less 
a decision about it reached, without involving 
several subordinate questions each one hav- 
ing no small proportions that attempt to 
discuss the Where, the When, and the How. 
Geographically considered, the World is a large 
place. And no one can have travelled over 
much of it, or have read its history to much 
purpose, without gaining sufficiency of evidence 
that large areas of this one World have had 
very different experiences with respect to every 
conceivable form of betterment. That many 
of these areas are economically, socially, and 
even morally and religiously, much worse off 
than they have been at other periods of their 
history, is altogether too obvious for dispute. 

[87] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

Indeed, some of them, as considered from the 
economic, social, and moral point of view, have 
been almost completely wiped off of the world's 
map; so that no comparison with their own 
past is possible: like that district once con- 
taining thirty millions of a prosperous people, 
in which the Chinese General Tso Tsung-t'ang 
suppressed the Mohammedan rebellion by de- 
stroying "every living thing." And who is 
optimistic enough to assure the hope that the 
World has even yet lived long enough, or 
grown enough better, to refrain in the future 
altogether from practising similar methods of 
betterment? 

The World is old in its life-history. And the 
question of its growing better or growing worse 
is, therefore, always a question of times and 
seasons. That it is steadily and always, as 
well as everywhere, going forward, few students 
of its history could be found to maintain. 
The prosperous man in his little village takes 
pride in his optimism to-day. In the next 
generation the unsuccessful man in that same 
village will be pessimistic indeed. Even now, 
there are not wanting wise old men who recall 

[88] 



THE ASSURANCE OF HOPE 

with regret the better conditions of that same 
village a generation or two ago. 

But above all, in its bearing on the main prob- 
lem and in its intrinsic importance, is the ques- 
tion, How? In what respect is the World 
markedly better than it used to be? In what 
respect are we entitled to the assurance of hope 
that it will continue to grow better? The man 
who most esteems the values provided by the 
optimistic hopes of science or of material pros- 
perity will give you one answer; the moral 
idealist will give you quite another. Observa- 
tion and the reading of history will confirm 
you in the opinion that the most optimistic 
hopes of the former afford no sound basis of 
a reasonable assurance on which to build the 
hopes of the latter. Indeed, the most rapid 
fulfilment of the hopes of the one may serve 
only to awaken the fears and diminish the hopes 
of the other. 

We are not proposing to argue the question 
in controversy between Optimism and Pessi- 
mism in this large, historical meaning of the 
words. We do not believe that it can be ar- 
gued by any one individual with another, on 

[891 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

a basis approaching a valid scientific induction. 
If it were possible to summarize all the data 
having to do with the Where and the When, 
men would still differ fundamentally as to the 
respect in which, as to the How. The man 
who bases his optimism on the inferior values, 
and who indulges his hopes as to their realiza- 
tion in the future of the World, would, in fact, 
continue to measure the good and evil of life 
by one standard; the man who regards the 
worth and efficiency for real betterment of the 
moral ideals, as the only reasonable ground 
for the assurance of his hopes, would continue 
to measure the World's claims to betterment 
by a quite different standard. 

There is a kind of Optimism, and there is a 
kind of Pessimism, however, between the claims 
of which we may find rational ground and man- 
ageable reasons for the distribution of our hopes. 
This is the kind of Optimism that opposes 
the deductions of pessimistic philosophy. It 
is the Optimism of moral and religious Hope, 
as opposed to the Pessimism of Absolutism. 
The doctrine of despair as to the final issue of 
cosmic and human social and moral evolution 

[90] 



THE ASSURANCE OF HOPE 

may be summarized in somewhat the following 
way: It is fixed in the very heart of existence, 
the blind Will, which deceives and by deceiving 
dominates and controls all the motives that 
appeal to man's will to live and to propagate 
his kind, that the World must go from bad to 
worse, and from worse to yet worse, until the 
only relief is obtained in the extinction of all 
conscious life. This is the answer which the 
Pessimism of Schopenhauer gives to every form 
of optimistic hoping. Plainly such Pessimism 
is not to be silenced, much less subjugated, by 
an appeal to facts as gathered and interpreted 
by the minor and more doubtful of man's 
optimistic hopes. 

To the Pessimism of Absolutism, however, 
the Optimism which finds its assurance of hope 
in the faiths of morality and religion replies 
with the ideal of a coming Divine Kingdom. 
Its argument to reverse for the moment 
the course which may be followed in the 
later attempts to answer the inquiry, What 
may I hope? can be described as seen from 
its goal by chaining together such concep- 
tions and emotions as the following, with 

[91] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

logical processes suited to the ideals of human 
reason. 

1. The Optimism which is the Hope of a 
Moral Ideal, of a Divine Kingdom. 

This hope is dependent upon 

2. The Belief in the triumph of the Moral 
Ideal. 

This belief is founded upon 

3. The Experience of Faith as including the 
reasoned conviction which affirms the perfec- 
tion of the Moral Attributes of God. 

In somewhat such way as this does the assur- 
ance of the highest hopes reach down into the 
soil of the profoundest and most rational of 
beliefs. 



[92] 



CHAPTER IV 
THE PRACTICAL USES OF HOPING 

T is often enough a dictate of practical wis- 
dom to ask oneself, What is the use of 
hoping? for this or for that other desired 
object; since the chances of obtaining it are 
so very small, or its value, when obtained, is 
not worth the effort it is likely to cost. The 
answer given in any particular case like this 
may take any one of several different forms. 
The very calling in question of the hope may 
result in a voluntary stiffening of its element 
of expectation, and in increased diligence and 
skill directed toward proving the reasonable- 
ness of its continuance. Or one may try, more 
or less successfully, to assume that mental atti- 
tude which is called the "surrender of the 
hope." The act of surrender, if measurably 
successful, may be accomplished by abandoning 
the expectation; or, more frequently, by think- 
ing or pretending to think, that we are well rid of 
the desire which excited the expectation. More 

[93] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

frequently still, perhaps, we have the result of 
an attempt to give up all hoping, in a "forlorn 
hope," or a sort of sullen, slowly dying hope. 
In fully fifty per centum of such cases the hope- 
less individual lives to be sincerely glad that 
his hope was disappointed. 

Very different, however, must our answer be 
to the question, What is the use of hoping at 
all? or, Of what practical benefit to humanity 
are the common hopes which are universal 
tokens of human nature under the existing 
circumstances of life's probabilities, of its risks 
and its rewards, its failures and its triumphs? 
In this form the question becomes a fairly silly 
question. It appears like asking, What is the 
use of having the emotional and practical 
nature that makes so important a part of being 
a man at all; and of playing a man's part in 
the midst of man's physical, economic, and 
social environment? 

In treating the question, What are the prac- 
tical uses of hoping? we are, therefore, somewhat 
in the position of the investigator of questions 
of casuistry in morals. We seem to be in search 
of prudential maxims and wise saws designed 

[94] 



PRACTICAL USES OF HOPING 

to secure the increased utility of our perform- 
ances in the way of indulging or suppressing 
our emotions, and of cultivating activities of 
the order characterized by the emotions. Shall 
we say, that we seek to establish a "technique" 
of hoping? If one could become expert in such 
a technique, why should not one play most 
effectively and mellifluously on the harp-strings 
of one's own, and of other susceptible natures? 
Surely, such artistic skill, accompanied as it 
must be by a succession of rich rewards, would 
be well worth the effort which its possession 
must entail. At any rate, we seem bound to 
seek for it with some particularity; for, on 
the one hand, we cannot possibly deny to our- 
selves or object to in others, every manner 
and degree of hoping; neither can we encourage 
all manners and degrees of this emotion and its 
accompanying practical activities, without in- 
quiring at all into the reasonableness and effec- 
tive uses of a certain proportion of them. 

There have already been provided some con- 
siderations which may now be turned to no 
small advantage in discussing certain of the 
more obvious rules governing the practical 

[95] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

uses of human hopes. We may refer with 
confidence to at least these three. To debate 
about, or hesitate over, the practical utility 
of hopes that are founded in immoral desires 
and ambitions, is impermissible. Immensely 
practical they may be so far as the achievement 
of their ends, by the morally unworthy means 
appropriate to such ends, is made the test of 
their practicability. But the man who regards 
the ideals of morality as alone worthy to control 
his practice, need not debate with himself, or 
even as a rule with others, over the "practical 
uses" of such hopes. 

It has also been shown that there are certain 
hopes, the nature and reasonableness of 
which are to be made clearer in subsequent 
chapters, whose practical uses are of inesti- 
mable worth, although they have to do with 
lofty ideals that have their grounds of trust 
laid in the beliefs and faiths of morality and 
religion; and although they require a hope that 
clings to these beliefs and faiths, in spite of 
much temporary disappointment and the long- 
deferred character of even their partial fulfil- 
ment. So abundant and clear are the tokens 

[96] 



PRACTICAL USES OF HOPING 

of the practical uses of these moral and religious 
hopes, that one may truthfully say: Without 
them there would be little chance of living 
worthily and well under any circumstances. 
Yes ! for those who hold them most intelligently 
and firmly, there would seem, if quite deprived 
of their practical uses, little worth or interest 
in living at all. 

One more consideration we have learned to 
make, which, although it is more vague and in- 
definite of application, has no slight influence 
on all our estimates of the practical utility of 
human hopes. This is the fact that, in very 
large measure, their utility is directly dependent 
on their illusory character. Much of the hop- 
ing of all men, especially in the earlier periods 
of life, is a sort of benevolent and divinely 
ordained deceit. It is a kindly trick of Provi- 
dence, lest the children of men should too early 
in their journey discover how trying that 
journey is surely destined to be, and so should 
become too easily and quickly discouraged. 
The reaction which comes with the discovery 
and it is fortunate if the discovery be not too 
sudden and shocking how illusory the great 

[97] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

majority of our earlier hopes in fact are, may, 
however, be in the direction of substituting 
for these, higher and better-founded hopes. 
For it is necessary to the successful conduct of 
life under the influence of feeling, that there 
should be a succession of hopes. To quote 
again the saying of Epictetus: "A ship ought 
not to be held by one anchor: nor life by a 
single hope." To make the best practical use 
of hoping, disappointed hope should not be 
allowed to lead to bitterness or despair. 

The Technique, or art, of making the best 
practical use of Hoping has its rightful applica- 
tion in two directions. These are the exciting 
of hopes in others, and the indulging of hopes 
in ourselves. In both respects, one ought to 
be equally moral as to essentials, and equally 
wise as to methods of control. But in neither 
respect can one altogether avoid mistakes, 
much less establish any claim to complete in- 
fallibility. 

The illusory character that belongs to so large 
a portion of all human hopings has already been 
declared to have a relation to the education 
and discipline of the human personal life. This 

[98] 



PRACTICAL USES OF HOPING 

is true whether we are dealing with the larger 
or the lesser hopes, with the hopes founded on 
doubtful or wicked desires and ambitions, or 
the hopes founded in the trust of the ultimate 
value and success of moral and religious ideals. 
All hoping has practical uses on account of its 
educatory character. 

From this general principle something may 
be learned as to the practical uses which may 
be made of the parent's or the teacher's chance 
to encourage or suppress the hopes of the child 
or of the pupil. The place of hoping in educa- 
tion raises not a few of the most delicate prob- 
lems. The young are inevitably subject to 
two extremes in every kind of their hopings. 
Both of these are extremes of exaggeration. 
They exaggerate the pleasure to be derived from 
the realization of their hopes; and they exagger- 
ate the probability that their hopes will be 
realized at all. What parent has not stood 
helpless before his child in the effort to make 
the child believe that life would not be one long 
stretch of an altogether wretched state of dis- 
appointment, if it should happen to rain on the 
day of the promised picnic or excursion into 

[99] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

the country. In vain also does one strive to 
surround the hoping of the child with elaborate 
safeguards as to the chances that things are 
likely to turn out unfavorable to its fulfilment. 
No matter how cautiously is stated the prom- 
ised satisfaction, both God and man are at once 
held jointly responsible for its prompt accom- 
plishment. Hopes of moderate satisfactions, 
made only in small measure probable of fulfil- 
ment, are not naturally adapted for the enter- 
tainment of the childish mind. The childish 
mind demands full and certain satisfaction for 
its most extravagant desires. 

But on the other hand, one cannot leave the 
little ones, whether old or young in years, to 
the depressing influences of dull and disap- 
pointed hopes. Here, as in other lines of con- 
duct, only that cultivated feeling and fine 
insight into personal character and special 
cases, which we call "Tact," will serve to secure 
the best practical uses of the solicited and en- 
couraged states of hoping. 

Similar embarrassments are sure to be en- 
countered by the teacher of youth, especially 
of the most promising and hopeful. Such 

[100] 



PRACTICAL USES OF HOPING 

pupils do not yet know under what limitations 
the best of scientific hopes are constantly held 
in check. Neither do they know the self- 
confessed, but unrevealed limitations of the 
best of teachers. Indeed with the teacher, the 
less extravagant his hopes, the better for him 
and for the great majority of his pupils. The 
earnest ones among his pupils expect him to do 
for them, what he can not: the lazy ones among 
his pupils expect him to do for them, what he will 
not. For only one in a hundred of them is any- 
thing approaching high and reasonable hopes 
possible. And yet there is not one of them who 
should have any of his honest hopes ruthlessly 
crushed. 

The evils of an injudicious handling of this 
emotion, for practical purposes, are beyond all 
doubt. The mischievous effects of hopes that 
have been either encouraged in an unrealistic 
and sickly sentimental way, or have been un- 
sympathetically treated, or cruelly suppressed, 
are only too conspicuous in the social institutions 
and civil governments of the present day. On 
the one hand, we have the whole spirit of organ- 
ized Socialism and most of its performances, as 

[101] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

well as a large proportion of the current re- 
formatory and remedial schemes and institu- 
tions, bolstering up or puffing up hopes of every 
kind of betterment, with scanty regard to the 
difficult task of imparting to the individuals 
who compose the social whole, or who control 
the governments, the fundamental beliefs of 
morality and the hopes and practices that de- 
pend upon these beliefs. It is the same old, 
very old, fallacy, of encouraging illusory and 
vanishing hopes, at the expense of the prin- 
ciples and the conduct, on which we must de- 
pend for securing the practical benefits of every 
kind of permissible hoping. 

The dreadful years in Russia, which followed 
the dissolution of the first Duma, illustrated 
most forcibly the baleful effect upon a whole 
nation of the disappointment of its dreams in 
hope of a sudden and great accession of political 
freedom. Similar effects follow the millenarian 
hopes which periodically excite large bodies 
of good but improvident people, when the 
Second Coming does not confirm their expecta- 
tion of him who came at first to lead the life 
of obscurity and shrinking from notoriety, and 
[102] 



PRACTICAL USES OF HOPING 

to end that life in a manner most disturbing 
for the time to those of his friends who had 
trusted him most implicitly. Not a commercial 
crisis occurs, not even a single savings-bank or 
civil-service corporation fails, that does not 
leave a trail behind, of the wrecks of disap- 
pointed hopes. Bloody riots among the miners 
and others of the so-called "laboring classes" 
have no other source of unreasonable violence so 
powerful as the failure of their employers, or 
of the leaders of their labor-unions, to make 
good the hopes they have injudiciously or mali- 
ciously excited. An endless row of individuals 
in all times and among all peoples has been 
going down to death in sullen submission to the 
inevitable, or in the active bitterness of despair; 
because they have either been cheated out of 
their hopes by their fellows, or have doomed 
themselves to an end bankrupt of hopes, by 
placing their investments in expectations that 
had no sufficient securities back of them. Per- 
haps, no other disaster to the individual, the 
community, or the nation, can quite equal in 
appalling completeness the total wreckage of its 
most highly cherished hopes. 

[103] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

Considerations such as these impart a char- 
acter of grave seriousness to the questions, What 
may I hope? and, To what practical uses may I 
most profitably put the hopes I cherish in 
myself and the hopes I excite and foster in 
others? 

In this matter of casuistry, or the "technique 
of conduct," as well as in most other matters 
of the same kind, carelessness or indifference 
to the probable issues is quite as disastrous as 
the deliberate intention to do the wrong thing. 
The man who has speculated with other people's 
money and has lost, commits suicide, because 
he cannot face the wrecking of his own hopes 
of wealth and of the social reverence and obei- 
sance which he quite reasonably believes the 
wealth will bring. But he would have done 
better to remember that the other one whose 
hopes he had engaged in building on insecure 
foundations, might, by their failure, be tempted 
to the suicide of despair equally with himself. 
For almost all human hopes have a sort of 
collective quality. They cannot easily be 
entertained, much less made practical use of, 
without involving others than ourselves. What 

[104] 



PRACTICAL USES OF HOPING 

indeed, may 7 hope for, which does not involve 
the hoping or the despairing of some brother 
man? The practical uses sought for my hope, 
therefore, should include the practical utility 
of that same hope for that other man. How 
shrewd are our brokers and promoters of all 
kinds of interests in making use of the collective 
character of human hopings, and in the manipu- 
lation of activities awakened and controlled by 
such hopings ! 

In devising methods for the utmost improve- 
ment of the practical uses of hoping, there is no 
other consideration inferior to that to which 
reference has already more than once been 
made. In order to sustain the conduct of life 
in an all-round way, so to say, and to the end 
of life, under the uplifting influence of hoping, 
there must be provided a constant succession 
of hopes. Among these hopes there would best 
be some that have the element of constancy 
abiding in themselves. This change of objects 
of desire and expectation affords, indeed, the 
way in which every individual is inclined to 
deal with himself, until, at least, he gets old 
in misfortune and quite wearied out with too 

[1051 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

frequent and too monotonous disappointment 
of his hopes. If the lover loses at last all ex- 
pectation of obtaining the woman of his earliest 
hopes, he seldom needs advice before long to 
transfer his hopes to some other woman. And 
the girl of his first hopeful choice is probably 
no less ready to change her affections and her 
hopes to another lover. Occasionally, in the 
first but usually only in the first access of 
passion over the loss of hope, one of the disap- 
pointed souls thinks to cheat destiny by taking 
refuge in a self-inflicted death. Yet more 
rarely, when both are equally grievously af- 
flicted, they commit suicide together, d, la mode 
Japonaise. Then the pitilessly cynical bring 
out some such saying as "The game is not 
worth the candle"; or "There are as good 
fish in the sea as any that have been taken." 
But the wise and kindly deprecate the inability 
to turn from disappointed hopes to others 
which have still fair promise of fulfilment; but 
especially the lack in any mortal's inner life 
of those faiths which lay the foundations for 
hopes ever-freshly springing and eternal. 

It is the leading thought of the celebrated 

[1061 



PRACTICAL USES OF HOPING 

life-motto of that greatest of all warriors and 
statesmen in the Old Japan, leyasu (the motto 
whose original is so carefully guarded in his 
shrine at Nikko, and so very seldom shown to 
visitors), that one should make the journey 
through life in the spirit in which the wise 
traveller sets out upon and pursues a long 
travel through an unfriendly land. This is 
with caution but never with the loss of true 
courage; with a fair and not over-sanguine or 
too despondent estimate of the difficulties of the 
way; with always tempered but never aban- 
doned hopefulness. But such moderation as 
this motto recommends can seldom or never 
be secured except as the result of the experience 
acquired by actual progress along the journey. 
And, therefore, the escape from the evil effects 
of the illusory character and disappointing end- 
ing of so many of life's hopes, can be gained only 
by a succession of such allurements, each period 
of which is marked by the soul's rising to a level 
of somewhat more reasonable and definitively 
moral, and, accordingly, more permissible forms 
of hoping. This is, indeed, the way in which 
most pedestrians, when the road is rough and 

[107] 



port* 
been 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

slimy beneath their feet, and the darkness of 
oncoming night renders invisible all signs of 
approaching comfortable shelter, do, in fact, 
keep up their courage and their hope. - If the 
hoped-for relief does not appear when the view 
from the nearest hill-top is gained, they re- 
place this hope with another which is to be 
realized only when the hill now just brought 
into view has, in fact, been climbed. There is 
many an old man who has kept himself sus- 
tained and cheery by a perpetual renewal and 
betterment of his hopes, although not one of 
them has been altogether, or even more than 
very partially, realized; and there is many a 
young man who has been forced to confess a 
total failure, because he has foolishly clung 
to some one, and that by no means a very im- 
portant one, of what might otherwise have 
his many hopes. 

We might then safely say in homely phrase 
to the one who questions, What may I hope? 
"You may hope for a lot of things; and you will 
do well to have and to cherish the members of 
a considerable succession of hopes." For life 
is not necessarily one-sided and all committed 

[108] 



PRACTICAL USES OF HOPING 

to one or two hopes, or under subjection to 
one or two fears. Make your fears as few as 
possible, and your hopes as many. And there is 
one best, if not indeed one only way to do this. 
The fear of God may relieve the soul of the fear 
of any man or any thing beside. And the hope 
which trust in God promotes may bring in its 
train all other reasonable and morally per- 
missible hopes. 

But we return for the time being to a lower 
level for the embellishment of our theory as to 
the practical uses of hoping. The man whose 
principal expectations are related to the daily 
or prospective success of his business, may 
transfer some store of this emotion and its prac- 
tical utility, to the culture of some form of 
science or of art; or to intercourse with friends 
who need his hopeful encouragement against 
their depressing fears; or best of all, to the 
inciting and nourishing of reasonable hopes 
in others whose lives, without some such help, 
would inevitably remain wellnigh hopeless. 
The inventor who finds his hopes, as long as he 
looks in only one direction, circumvented, does 
not altogether lose all hope; but the rather 

[109] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

turns his hopeful searching in another and per- 
haps quite opposite direction. The truly brave 
general who has been defeated in battle does 
not surrender all hope, and retreat to his tent 
to sulk or commit suicide; he contrives how 
he may hopefully try again with another kind of 
strategy. The student of music, whose hope 
of learning the violin has been quenched in the 
discovery that his tactile sensations are defec- 
tive, may turn his attention with hope to learn- 
ing the piano. Many a dull boy in the classical 
languages, who has in his own and his teacher's 
estimate reached the gloomiest regions of 
despair of ever knowing anything, may be 
roused to a condition of hopeful endeavor by 
the discovery that he can do well in mathematics 
or physics. For, we repeat, there are many 
hopes permissible for almost any human life; 
and if one of them will not bring forth the 
peaceable fruits of a hope fulfilled, some other 
may confer the same benefit by the early dis- 
covery of its practical utility. 

A certain versatility in hoping is, therefore, 
a most desirable attainment. A considerable 
mixture of the sanguine is most favorable for 

[1101 



PRACTICAL USES OF HOPING 

every one's temperament. An education in 
the art of hoping, both as respects self-culture 
and the assistance of others, is a most important 
part of education. The influence of hopes 
disappointed, only to turn with no less con- 
fidence to other and more reasonable hopes, 
seems to be an essential method in life's dis- 
cipline. The illusoriness of all human hopes, 
except the few if such there prove to be 
that have foundations in the unchanging and 
eternal, may be made practical use of to im- 
prove the richness of human experience, and to 
gild the rareness of wisdom which they attain 
who get the most and best out of this experience. 
At this point, then, we naturally return to the 
thought of the important part which certain 
hopes take in making the best practical use 
of all human hopings for the upbuilding of 
personality. These hopes, and the beliefs and 
faiths on which they repose, constitute the 
most essential equipment for realizing the 
ideals of the personal life. On the one hand, 
these ideals and their faiths and hopes are so 
related to the practical uses of the personal 
life, and to the needs of its development, that 

mi] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

its best success cannot be attained without 
them. On the other hand, they are of such a 
nature as to assume a well-merited supremacy 
of control over the attempts at realizing the 
lesser and lower hopes. They give the prin- 
ciples which should regulate all the practical 
uses of all manner of hoping. But, like all such 
principles they do not furnish the maxims, they 
do not teach the technique, which should con- 
trol the reasonableness of now encouraging and 
now discouraging this or that particular hope. 
The sources of such a technique are essentially 
the same as those in which are to be found all 
the rules for the management of the details of 
conduct. They are to be learned by insight, 
wide observation, knowledge of psychological 
science, and large experience. And they all 
imply a right moral attitude toward them. 

What, then, are the suggestions which should 
be improved not to say, the definite rules 
which must be adopted in order to realize 
the greatest practical utility in ourselves and 
in others, for this so often illusory but, in an ed- 
ucatory way, invaluable emotion of hope? Of 
these suggestions, the most important brings 

[112] 



PRACTICAL USES OF HOPING 

the control of this emotion before the mandates 
of the moral law, as themselves supplied and 
enforced by the ideals of the personal life. The 
shrewdest practical use of some hopes, even if it 
caused them in the end to be crowned with the 
most distinguished success, is impermissible, 
because forbidden as inconsistent with the 
higher destiny of the spirit that is in man to be 
encouraged and cultivated to its own welfare 
under the ministration of hope. To have such 
hopes succeed is far worse, as measured by the 
worth of this destiny, than to have them end 
in total failure. And, indeed, they seldom do 
quite succeed; and when they seem to come 
nearest to a complete and brilliant success, 
their owner, who has really been their subject 
and slave, is far more apt to proclaim their 
worthlessness than his own joy in them and in 
their issues. 

But, as it were to balance this allurement of 
hoping to an evil issue, or to an issue the worth 
of which is determined by the bitterness of 
the disappointment, there are certain hopes 
permissible in their reasonableness and com- 
mended by the ideals of personal life, whose very 

[113] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

elusiveness seems to add vastly to their value 
for practical uses. These hopes grow out of 
trust in the beliefs and faiths of morality and 
religion. They look toward the progressive 
realization, in the individual and the race, of 
the ideals of morality and religion. The result 
which is the consummation of these hopes, 
being an ideal existence, their full realization 
cannot be anything quite at hand, or obtainable 
in its perfection at any given date or stage 
of the development of the individual or of the 
race. But for this very reason, to those who 
apprehend them by a living faith, and who 
pursue them with intelligence and unflagging 
devotion, these hopes are all the more abundant 
in their practical usefulness, on account of this 
their illusory but by no means fatally deceptive 
character. They are, indeed, never realized 
in their completeness by those who cherish 
them most carefully, and prize them most 
highly. The more ardently one follows them, 
the more does their retreat beyond the region 
of one's present attainment, fill one with a kind 
of divinely chastening despair. But they are 
permissible hopes. From the higher, rational 
[114] 



PRACTICAL USES OF HOPING 

point of view, they are reasonable hopes. And 
from the point of view of the mind that has 
reached a vital and forceful faith in the realities 
and values of the life of the spirit, they have 
become educative and even mandatory hopes. 
Of such hopes we shall distinguish these three: 
The hope of moral perfection; the hope of im- 
mortality; and the hope of a Divine Kingdom. 
How to put these hopes to their most appropri- 
ate and efficient practical uses is a question 
which can be satisfactorily answered only by 
that culture of feeling and judgment which we 
have already ventured to characterize as a kind 
of "Tact." 

On this matter of tact in the management 
of human hopes, no detailed instructions can 
possibly be given. If we had the courage to 
attempt such instructions, the time and place 
for them would not be now and here. But we 
may be permitted to quote a few sentences on 
the psychology of Tact from a work in which 
the subject is treated in more extended form. 
("Philosophy of Conduct," pp. 420 ff.; from 
which some quotations are also made in "What 
Ought I to Do?" p. 241 f.) "The psychology 

[115] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

of tact is an extremely difficult subject to treat 
scientifically. This is chiefly due to the two 
following reasons: first, the factors which enter 
into any judgment of tact are exceedingly subtle 
and evanescent; and, second, the complexity 
of the combinations of these factors in the in- 
dividual judgments of tact is very great. It is 
the rapidity and immediacy, combined with a 
certain sureness and appropriateness of his con- 
clusions, which gives to the tactful person his 
admirable ability to act aright under compli- 
cated conditions. This judgment has the char- 
acter of a judgment of first intention, as it were; 
we are inclined therefore to call it 'perception/ 
'intuition,' or 'insight,' rather than a conclusion 
reached through any conscious recognition of 
the grounds on which it is placed. Indeed, the 
factors which enter into the concluding mental 
state, the decisions that determine what is to 
be done in the particular cases, arise so little 
way above the threshold of consciousness (if 
they come up out of the sphere of the psycho- 
physical mechanism at all) and blend together 
or disappear with such rapidity, as fully to 
warrant that view of the nature of tact which 
[116] 



PRACTICAL USES OF HOPING 

the popular language implies. The How, and 
the Why, this particular judgment, rather than 
another, was actually reached cannot gener- 
ally be assigned by the person whose judgment 
it is." 

The fuller doctrine of tact would then go on 
to analyze its elements into these four: Sensi- 
tiveness of feeling or quickness of sympathy; 
insight into the motives of men, generally, and 
especially into the motives of those composing 
one's social environment; experience as to the 
consequences of different courses of conduct; 
and subtlety of reasoning, or skill in the drawing 
of detailed inferences. 

Since all these elements of tact are suscep- 
tible of detailed cultivation, it is not without 
warrant if the seeker for an answer to the 
question, What may I hope with the best 
chances of turning to good practical account 
my hoping? gets the somewhat vague, but 
after all not uninstructive answer: Cultivate 
diligently that rare skill in the selection and 
management of the hopes open to human minds 
and hearts, which, for the lack of a better word, 
we call a sort of Tact. And this is about all 

[117] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

which it is worth while to attempt saying con- 
cerning the technique which aims to bring to 
the highest pitch of utility, for the individual 
and for the race, the illusory but invaluable, 
the risky but indispensable, emotion of hoping. 

There is one point of view, however, from 
which we may derive a profound reason for 
maintaining a most encouraging estimate of 
the practical utility of all human hopes, includ- 
ing in this respect, at least, even the most illu- 
sory and universally disappointing of many 
that are highly prized and snugly cherished. 
From this point of view we obtain insight into 
the usefulness of human hopes in relation to the 
freedom of the human will^XBy this we under- 
stand the value of hoping, on account of its 
power to evoke resolution and energy in the 
pursuit of practical ends which it would other- 
wise be quite impossible to arouse. How often 
does the great and final reward for this resolu- 
tion and this energy come not at all by the way 
of obtaining the things hoped for; but, the 
rather, in the first instance, by the way of 
quickening and cultivating to astounding 
growths the energies that would, were it not 

[118] 



PRACTICAL USES OF HOPING 

for the summons of hope, lie quite dormant; 
and, second, by the way of securing many other 
and even more valuable goods than those, to- 
ward which, precisely, the hopes were originally 
directed. How often, fortunately, are the "by- 
products" of hope worth far more than any of 
its immediate and carefully planned satisfac- 
tions! The young man hopes for wealth or 
fame; he realizes habits of industry. He works 
seven years in joyful hope of Rachel; he gets 
Leah; but she is the better wife of the two. 

Indeed, there are hopes that are of more 
practical usefulness when they are let wither. 
The dried bud is sweeter than would have been 
the full-blown rose after its petals had soon 
fallen. But the main point is that moral free- 
dom could not reach either its more perfect 
development or its fuller outcome, were it not 
for the incitement and allurement of many 
disappointed hopes. Doubtless, if we could do 
such a hopelessly vast sum in the arithmetic 
of human emotions, and could strike off a bal- 
ance-sheet to show in complete detail the net 
profits over losses; the disappointments caused 
by the indulgence of false and illusory hopes 

[119] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

would be far more than compensated for by the 
good results subjective, or in character, and 
objective, or in good things procured that 
had actually been reached by the exertions these 
same hopes had fostered. 

Man is made the freer, the more energetic 
and dominant spirit, by his hopes. Striving, 
and the increase of the "super-man" by striv- 
ing, is the greatest, the all-inclusive practical 
good of high hopefulness. If the things hoped 
for are selfish and morally unworthy of the free 
striving which seems to be needed to gain, or 
even to approach them, even then, certain 
heroic virtues may be aroused and cultivated 
by the unworthy hoping. Such are courage, 
endurance, self-control. 

But the true hero cannot be made, unless the 
chastening process of disappointed hopes is 
thoroughly applied. This is the lesson of all 
great tragedy, especially of the greatest of all 
tragedy, that of the ancient Greeks. This is the 
lesson of life. As says Maurice Baring, com- 
menting on Pushkin in his work treating of "The 
Russian People" (p. 217): "All the various 
roads by which men who are called to mental 

[120] 



PRACTICAL USES OF HOPING 

regeneration eventually attain it are in reality 
only two: the road of inward transformation, 
by which man attains to true self-control, or 
the road of a vital catastrophe, which liberates 
the soul from the burden of its passions." 
This is to say that, without the reaction of the 
free spirit to disappointed hopes, the end of 
mental regeneration is difficult or impossible 
for man to obtain. To the spirit who desires 
the perfection of spiritual heroism, and who 
asks the question, What may I hope? the an- 
swer may then well enough be: Set your hopes 
high and strive and pray to realize them. But 
be prepared to welcome disappointment in the 
matter of their realization, in order that you 
may the better share that purification of the 
spirit which has triumphed by gaining a free- 
dom independent of the immediate and com- 
plete satisfaction of any of its limited and 
particular hopes. 



[121] 




CHAPTER V 

CONCERNING HOPES, SCIENTIFIC, 
POLITICAL, AND SOCIAL 

MONG the greater hopes which may 
reasonably be cherished by every man 
who is sincerely willing to comply with 
the conditions of belief on which they are 
founded, we have selected three and have 
raised them to a claim of supremacy over all 
other forms of human hoping. These hopes 
have their practical utility in arousing and 
cultivating the spirit that is in man. However, 
they can scarcely be called universal in the 
sense of the dictum uttered by the wise man 
Thales; for all men do not in fact have them, 
whether they possess, or not, anything else. 
Not only savages, but also large numbers among 
the most highly civilized races, give little 
thought to their own moral perfection. To use 
the more definitely religious term, they neither 
prize nor cherish the hope of salvation. As to 
the hope of immortality, some vague belief in 
the existence after death of the human indi- 



HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

vidual is, indeed, nearly or quite universal. 
But perhaps in more than half the race, this 
belief is the source of fear rather than of hope; 
and where the attitude toward the belief is 
one, predominatingly, of hoping, its object 
cannot properly be dignified with the title 
"immortality," in the more spiritual meaning 
of the word. As to the hope of a Divine King- 
dom, while there are adumbrations of the con- 
ception of an improved social order occurring 
in various times and scattered places of the 
world's history, it is only in that form of reli- 
gious development which began among the 
Hebrew prophets and is even now scarcely on 
the threshold of its largest measure of legitimate 
influence, that the mind and heart of man find 
their completer satisfactions. 

Between these rarer but most permissible of 
hopes, and those which are universal but ordi- 
narily not so reasonable, whether we consider 
their moral quality or their practicability, 
stand certain classes of this emotion which par- 
take of the characters derived from both. On 
the one hand, they are less distinctly individual, 
less closely bound to the faiths of morality and 

[123] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

religion, than are the "hopes of the spirit"; 
on the other hand, they are more intellectually 
expansive and unselfish than are the hopes 
which allure and control the multitude in their 
daily conduct of material affairs. They are 
not so intimately concerned with the immediate 
interests of the personal life, as it is led toward 
its distant and lofty ideals under the influence 
of its more noble desires, expectations, and 
forms of trust. Yet they have much of the 
same wide horizon, much of faith in the value 
and triumph of essentially the same ideals; 
and much of the same altruistic summons and 
call to self-devotion. They deal the rather, 
however,- with the concrete problems that con- 
stantly arise as to the most effective way to 
secure those practical issues, in the securing of 
which all substantial betterment of human life 
under its present conditions, so far as these 
conditions themselves admit of no substantial 
alteration, must consist. Thus these hopes 
have to do with the ideal of a world visible 
rather than the world of invisible ideals. They 
undertake the effort to realize a better envi- 
ronment for this earthly life rather than to 
[124] 



HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

secure the immortal life. They devise schemes 
for improving the governments of this earth 
rather than for bringing about a Kingdom of 
Heaven, that must be conceived of, if at all 
adequately, in a timeless and non-sensuous 
way. 

This vague preface has been designed to in- 
troduce a brief discussion of three classes of the 
most generous and practically useful forms of 
the hoping of modern civilized peoples. They 
are the hopes which may be classified as (1) 
Scientific; (2) Political; and (3) Social. As to 
the relations of these classes to one another and 
to the development of the human race, two 
remarks seem pertinent at the very beginning. 
And, first: the means for the progressive real- 
ization of these different kinds of hoping are 
all, of course, dependently related and in a 
very intimate way. All political and social 
improvement, all reaching after and efficient 
maintaining of the means for organizing and 
enforcing an improved control over, and an 
increased welfare of, the great body of the 
people, is conditioned upon the state of the 
positive sciences among that people; and upon 

[125] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

the amount of influence which the Government 
is ready to allow to those sciences. It is science 
which has made war more swift and more 
terrible. It is on science, next to the growth 
of the spirit of justice and brotherliness, that 
we must rely for doing away with the horrors, 
and even with the very existence, of war. As 
for all kinds of social reform and social better- 
ment, how dependent is society upon the re- 
alization of the hopes of the ever-advancing 
and ever-conquering scientific control over the 
forces of nature and over the bodies and minds 
of men ! 

But, on the other hand, unless the politics 
and social conditions of the land are under the 
control of those desires and ambitions for the 
satisfaction of which permissible and reason- 
able hopes may be entertained, neither the 
work of scientific research nor the benefits of 
applied science can be expected in the same 
exalted way. Unwisdom and unrighteousness 
undo the beneficent results of growth in knowl- 
edge. All this interweaving in the political 
and social fabric, of motives and results apper- 
taining to these classes of hopes is, in general, 

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HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

too obvious to need illustration, and too com- 
plicated to make it possible in any thorough 
way to trace the separate threads of its texture. 
But we have spoken of these hopes, scientific, 
political, and social, as belonging to modern 
civilized peoples. This limitation applies quite 
strictly to the very nature of the case. Sav- 
ages, or so-called "primitive" races, give little 
or no evidence of entertaining not to say, 
even dimly conceiving any of these hopes. 
The conception of science, in the full modern 
meaning of the term, has not dawned upon 
their minds. Much less, then, is it likely that 
they have opened their eyes to take in those 
fair prospects of an imagined future, when the 
growth of human knowledge shall realize the 
yet more perfect fulfilment of that for which 
the most extravagant of its dreamers now 
scarcely venture to indulge the hope. This is 
not, however, because the savage, or even the 
"primitive man," is lacking in keen powers of 
accurate observation, shrewdness of insight, 
precision in his intellectual processes, or the 
higher gifts of a thoroughly rational nature. 
The ancient Greeks were surely not inferior to 

[127] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

us in any of these intellectual qualities neces- 
sary to the nourishment of the most reasonable 
of human hopes. But for them, too, the con- 
ception of science, in the full modern meaning 
of the word, as applied to the physical world, 
did not as yet exist. 

By no means precisely the same thing can be 
said of the political and social hopes that are 
rising into prominence in our modern civiliza- 
tions. Savages and "primitive men" have, 
indeed, no such hopes. The hope of a political 
constitution that shall perfectly represent, and 
as nearly as possible, practically secure, the 
welfare of all the subjects coming under it, is 
much too large and too strictly conditioned 
upon its environment, and upon a long and 
intricate process of development, to have any 
place even in the dreams of savage and uncivi- 
lized life. The same thing is true of the cog- 
nate conception of an ideal social condition 
established among men here upon the earth. 
But for these conceptions, and the hopes con- 
nected with them, we do not have to wait 
upon modern times. Many centuries ago they 
formed themselves in China. The idea of the 

[128] 



HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

perfect State, and of the perfect social organi- 
zation within and under the Government of 
the State, was supposed to be given by Confu- 
cius and Mencius in unchanging form. Yet 
nowhere else in the world, perhaps, have the 
hopes made permissible and seemingly reason- 
able by the adoption of this conception, been 
more sadly disappointed than in this same land 
of China. Nowhere else, perhaps, has govern- 
ment or society become, in fact, more miserably 
corrupt. From Plato's "Republic" to Rous- 
seau's Control social, and later on, there have 
been innumerable attempts to picture the ideal 
of human civil and social relations in such man- 
ner as to excite high hopes of its fulfilment in 
the near future. Some lessons as to the limi- 
tations of hopes scientific, political, and social, 
may indeed be learned from the past. But the 
character of these hopes at the present time is, 
in many of its important features, most worthy 
of our attention. 

In considering hopes as they are held by the 
positive sciences of the present day, one of the 
most important and illumining points of view 
is that which is taken when we arrive at an 

[129] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

understanding of the nature of their limitations. 
The rights of hopes scientific are, indeed, of the 
most undoubted character. They are the rights 
which belong to all truth of fact, and to the 
legitimate inferences from fact. The limita- 
tions of the hopes of science are, then, only 
such as are consistent with those rights; as, 
indeed, flow from those rights. It is, indeed, 
greatly to the advantage of such hopes, prop- 
erly speaking, that they cannot possibly come 
into conflict with the moral law, or with the 
ideals of morality and religion. Individual 
devotees of science may often enough be con- 
victed of immoral desires and ambitions in 
their scientific pursuits; and of exciting expec- 
tations and fears as well as hopes in others, in 
ways not countenanced by moral principle. 
But the mind and heart of science, as such, is 
ever bent on the discovery and cautious but 
courageous proclamation of the truth. De- 
sires and ambitions directed purely toward the 
knowledge of God, man, and the world of things, 
and toward the better adjustment of the rela- 
tions of men to one another, to their physical 
environment, and to the Divine Being, can not, 
[ISO] 



HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

as such, incur moral disapprobation as do the 
desires and ambitions which foster the hopes of 
any form of material and personal good. 

It is, indeed, true that in the thought of 
many, and among them peoples by no means 
lacking in the evidences of a high degree of 
civilization, the view has prevailed that the 
gods are jealous of too great increase of knowl- 
edge among men. For if knowledge increase 
among men, shall not they come to possess 
some of those secrets by which the gods evince 
their superiority to men; and in the secure 
possession of which the gods are able to main- 
tain their supremacy over men? Even the 
"divine Plato" at one time gave utterance to 
the opinion that to inquire curiously into the 
origin and construction of the physical Universe 
might be deemed to savor somewhat strongly 
of impiety. Yet wilder dreams concerning the 
way in which the Supreme One may have made 
the physical Universe have never come from 
any asylum for the insane than were indulged, 
in one of his most celebrated writings, by this 
same Plato. Our nobler idea of God and saner 
ideals of morality have removed such unworthy 

[131] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

and childish conceptions of the limitations 
divinely set to the ambitions and aspirations of 
the human mind for an unrestricted right to 
seek the truth, and when found to make wise 
practical use of it. 

Of course, in absolving science from these 
limitations, we are not commending science, 
whether genuine or falsely so-called, for its 
attacks on religion, or for the uses made of its 
results to facilitate the outrages of government 
by violence, the greed of the avaricious, the 
swift and facile commission of crime, or the 
escape from the more immediate consequences 
of the indulgence in vice. They who make 
these uses of science must answer for themselves 
at the bar of moral reason, where neither "ne- 
cessity" nor personal advantage can serve in 
the slightest degree as an available excuse. 
They can not prate of science and its inviolable 
rights before the court whose issues are always 
decided with each individual man, according 
to the moral ideals that spring from the sources 
of the personal life. 

As to the intellectual, in distinction from the 
more distinctly ethical limitations of the hopes 

[132] 



HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

of science, our opinions must modestly follow 
"the middle of the way"; although even its 
course is in places devious, and all along hazy 
and indistinct enough. That there are limita- 
tions set to the reasonableness on intellectual 
grounds, of the ambitions and desires which 
call forth and nourish the hoping of men for 
an indefinite increase of knowledge, and for an 
unrestricted ministry to the welfare of the race 
through the advance of knowledge, no devotee 
of science can possibly doubt. But precisely 
what those limitations are, only science itself 
can, by its own legitimate advances, with cer- 
tainty discover. The unchanging nature of 
the human mind, and the fundamental princi- 
ples, fixed laws and forms, and ultimate [ends, 
of the Universe, which science aims to know, 
must determine these limitations. For knowl- 
edge and "science" is only another and more 
popularly imposing name for knowledge is 
a relation between the two. The very concep- 
tion of knowledge implies a vital and effective 
correspondence between the Universe and the 
mind of man. But both the mind of man and 
the Universe which is but another name for 

[133] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

the total environment of which man is a part 
are in a course of unceasing development. Of 
the spirit that is in man, we must say that we 
know it, as it is at present, only in part; and 
we can only faintly conjecture what, when per- 
fected, it shall be. Of the Spirit that is in the 
Universe, the individual and the race has only 
enough knowledge to stimulate the desire and 
encourage the hope of a never-ending process 
of learning more. 

Now there is a bad use and there is a good 
use which may be made of this view of the in- 
tellectual limitations of human scientific hopes. 
The bad use leads to a cynical agnosticism; 
and this temper is particularly liable to the 
temptation to assault the faiths and hopes of 
morality and religion. Science it is then 
claimed can get along as well without as 
with the belief that its principles and dicta have 
any sure ground in the reality of an "extra- 
mental" world of things and minds. But, of 
course, religion cannot; nor can a theory of the 
moral ideals that finds its final place of repose 
in the faith of a perfectly righteous personal 
Spirit as the Ground of this "extra-mental" 

[134] 



HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

world of things and minds. Science may be 
satisfied with the phenomenal; morals and re- 
ligion must envisage Reality. While, then, 
the former may profess a sort of theoretical 
tolerance of agnosticism in its more absolute 
form; the latter can tolerate such agnosticism 
neither theoretically nor practically. 

But the good use of this doctrine of the in- 
tellectual limitations of man's scientific hopes 
widens indefinitely the horizon of these hopes; 
while at the same time it recommends modesty 
in the exercise, and caution in the application, 
of them. The genuine spirit of science will 
not regard its own hypotheses, or even its own 
most firmly established so-called laws, as having 
the right to set fixed limits to its hopes. This, 
to be sure, is too often done in the name of 
science. It seems to say to itself, "Now you 
must no longer hope to discover any fact in- 
consistent with this generalization" (for ex- 
ample, the conservation and correlation of 
energy, or the impossibility of "action from a 
distance"); or, "You must not accept any 
explanation of phenomena which appears to 
take them out of the limits of action and re- 

[135] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

action as applying to a strictly mechanical 
system." In the name of the freedom of sci- 
ence, and in the interests of its right always 
with hope to extend its own limitations, we must 
protest its ever making itself the slave of its 
own laws. Laws are not laid down by the posi- 
tive sciences in order to limit strictly their 
hopes for the future; but, the rather, to mark 
the boundaries to which their past work in 
hope has already carried them forward. Laws 
are the vehicles in which science rides forward 
to places where it may, perchance, leave them 
behind; they are not the stone walls which it 
has built with its own hands, forever to bar its 
progress in any particular direction. 

The limits of the intrinsically unknowable can, 
indeed, never be passed by human knowledge. 
But we do not know what those limits are. 
We modestly recognize that such limits exist, 
In the name of science we neither boast that 
we have fixed them in forever unchangeable 
shape; or that we have just discovered the 
way in which they may all be removed. We 
move forward in a hope limited by many mis- 
takes and errors of the past; but also with a 

[136] 



HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

hope that recognizes no final limitations save 
those as yet unrevealed ones which have been 
set by the hand of the Omniscient himself. 

In this spirit the reasonable hopes of science 
take two chief directions. One of these is the 
direction of a continuous increase of knowledge; 
the other is the direction of a continuously 
increased success in the practical uses of knowl- 
edge for the relief of the evils, and for the larger 
welfare, of mankind. 

In the first of these two directions, the goal 
which determines the hopes of science is the re- 
duction of the explanation of the Universe on 
its many sides to some form of a Unity. From 
facts to laws that bring restricted classes of facts 
under some one form of generalization; from 
these laws of a more limited application to 
laws of more extended generalization and of 
wider application; from these higher laws to 
principles that serve to combine them all in 
a still more comprehensive unity of thought; 
the positive sciences aim to extend their task 
of explaining the Universe as a whole. The 
ultimate goal of their hopes may be said to be 
the discovery of some one Principle that shall 

[137] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

give unity to all the so-called laws subsumed 
under it; and that shall serve as a point of start- 
ing for the explanation of all the facts of experi- 
ence of which those laws are the generalization. 

So often, however, as any considerable ap- 
proach seems to be gained toward the realization 
of this Ideal, the embodiment of the hopes 
of the ages of science and philosophy, the 
bigness and mystery of the actual World of 
things and of men, seems to snatch the com- 
pound from the grasp of humanity, resolve 
it into its infinity of elements, and call upon 
the workmen to begin their task over again. 
Nearly a half-century ago, for example, certain 
formulas were propounded for all the manifold 
and mysterious phenomena of life; biological 
science thought to have realized its hopes, so 
long cherished in vain, of having at hand a 
comparatively simple explanation of the in- 
finitely varied differentiations of living forms. 
Then this one principle was subjected to scores, 
and finally to hundreds, of variations, some 
trivial and some so important as really to 
destroy the unity of the principle for the main- 
tenance of which they were offered. And now 

[138] 



HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

the cry is, not "back to Darwin" or "back 
to Lamarck"; but "back to the facts." On 
renewed examination, the facts themselves are 
discovered to exceed in variability and infinity 
of number all previous stretches of the imagi- 
nation; and not a single one of the simplest 
of these facts is adequately explained by the 
most skilful combination of items selected 
from all the theories. 

Such experience of disappointed hopes as the 
facts of life administer to the loftiest desires 
and proudest confidences of the positive sciences 
in their efforts completely to comprehend the 
Universe, do not, however, serve to destroy 
those hopes forever and completely, or to upset 
for all time those confidences of success in the 
future. For by the advances of science man 
does constantly understand better both him- 
self and the world in which he lives. 

It is a particularly interesting thing to notice 
in this connection that the hopes of the positive 
sciences and the hopes of the philosophy of 
religion, or of that reflective thinking which 
aims to explain the phenomena of man's re- 
ligious life and religious development, show 

[139] 



VHAT MAY i HOPE? 

in respect of the goal they are seeking, a notable 
correspondence. They both seek some one 
supreme Principle of explanation for all the 
facts of man's experience. They both cherish 
the hope to know the World of things and of 
men, and the development of both in their 
reciprocal relations, as it appears when viewed 
in its Unity, and so as admitting of one Source, 
one Ground, one Final Purpose (sub specie 
aeternitatis) . And it will not infrequently, if 
not generally, be found, when they quarrel, it 
is over details of method rather than over the 
essentials of the grand conclusion reached by 
them both. 

The second of the two directions in which the 
hopes of science chiefly expend themselves, ad- 
mits of a more definite tracing and of more 
definite tests for its successes or its failures. It 
is the hope of banishing the evils of existing 
physical and social conditions by applying the 
discoveries of science to their mitigation or 
removal. Among such conditions, which man 
thinks he has the right to consider evil, are the 
obstacles thrown in his way, whether by nature 
or by his fellow men, to the more prompt and 

[140] 



HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

complete realization of his desires for material 
good and for the relief of bodily sufferings and 
sicknesses. Modern science (especially as it 
is proclaimed by the press) greatly encourages 
these hopes. And who can deny that it has in 
a generous and notable way made good the 
hopes it has so freely encouraged? To support 
this confidence it is not necessary to go over 
again the ground of the illustrations used in 
answer to the question, What is the use of 
knowing? (Chapter X, "What Can I Know?") 
The comforts and safe-guards of our daily life 
are full of the illustrations of our obligations, of 
our enormous debt, to modern science. 
1 There are, however, two considerations which 
form permanent limitations to the hopes of 
applied science in its beneficent endeavors to 
promote the welfare of mankind. One of 
these is derived from the moral sphere. It is 
not theological dogma alone which ascribes 
the larger proportion of all the evils that in- 
flict humanity to ignorance and to wrong-doing. 
But medical science does not inquire whether 
the patient to whom its ministrations are sum- 
moned, is suffering for his own vices, or for 

[141] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

the vices of his ancestors, or without fault of 
either himself or them. It is as ready and as 
eager to relieve the sufferings of the licentious 
roue as of the purest mother in the throes of 
childbirth. Aeroplanes and submarines, and 
all the most improved machinery of war, are 
equally at the service of the injuring and the 
injured party. The burglar vies with the 
banker in his efforts to employ the forces of 
physics and of chemistry in the successful pur- 
suit of his chosen "profession." 

But even with all these and innumerable other 
similar facts in view, he is a short-sighted seer 
who pretends to descry the time when science 
shall do away with the evil consequences of hu- 
man ignorance and sin. The relation between 
suffering and wrong-doing is firmly bedded in 
the very constitution of the Universe itself. In- 
deed, from the religious point of view, the knot 
in the cord that ties the two together was 
made by the hand of God himself; and only 
He can loosen or resolve it in his own ap- 
pointed way. Neither individuals nor nations 
can reasonably hope to remove the limitations 
which the facts and laws and ideals of the 

[142] 



HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

moral life impose upon the benefactions of 
science when applied to the relief of the suffer- 
ings of mankind. In spite of modern science 
the ancient doctrine of Karma will though 
it may be in changing form and in subtile and 
concealed courses hold on its way. The 
law of "ethical causation" will never be abol- 
ished or much modified by the positive sciences. 
No amount of tinkering will make the "covers 
of the devil's saucepans" fit tight enough to 
allow no odor of their contents to offend the 
nostrils. The individual's hope of salvation 
and the hope of the Kingdom of Heaven for 
the race, demand for their realization other 
resources and aids than those that can be pro- 
vided by the positive sciences. Ignorance and 
vice will still continue to limit the more 
extravagant hopes awakened by the growing 
consciousness of the power to control results 
which comes with the increase of knowledge. 

We are led along a somewhat different line 
of thinking to substantially the same conclu- 
sion by the fuller knowledge which the sciences 
themselves impart as to the irremovable con- 
ditions that limit every sort of advance in the 

[143] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

realization of human hopes. The necessity of 
toil and suffering as the inescapable means 
of realizing the noblest and most legitimate of 
these hopes, this principle, too, seems em- 
bedded in the very constitution of the Universe. 
And all the mitigations of evil afforded by the 
positive sciences introduce us into a further 
knowledge of their own limitations. The new 
discoveries carry with them their own checks 
and embarrassments; or, if they do not do this 
in a quite obvious way, they bring to the surface 
the necessity of other kindred or more remote 
evils. New disadvantages still to be overcome; 
new obstacles in the path that still await re- 
moval; new disappointments for the enlarging 
desires; such are the experiences which dog 
the footsteps of every forward movement made 
in the fulfilment of scientific hopes. "The 
gods sell all things good to men, for toil," said 
the Greeks. The Kingdom of Heaven must 
still be taken by violence. And in the lower 
region of the more vulgar hopings: You can 
not indefinitely increase the price of butter and 
sugar and at the same time indefinitely cheapen 
the cake; you can not at the same time eat and 
[144] 



HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

keep the same piece of cake. In the wise con- 
viction of the immovable nature of this sort of 
limitations, the different forms of modern science 
are quite as full of warnings against unreason- 
able hopes as of encouragements for an increase 
of reasonable hopes. Indeed, this is the chief 
office of science in the direction of the people's 
hoping, to encourage, and at the same time 
to keep it within reasonable limits. 

The case of hopes political and social is in 
certain important respects different from that 
of hopes scientific., In the civil governments 
and social constitutions and customs of men, 
the dominance of moral principles and ideals 
is at once apparent. These hopes have directly 
to do with the success or failure of the relations 
of men with one another. The desires and ambi- 
tions out of which the hopes arise, themselves 
lie all within the moral sphere. Ambitions, 
desires, and hopes, all have their immediate ex- 
pression in forms of conduct. And the sphere 
of conduct is the sphere of morality. 

From this fundamental fact follows the too 
often forgotten truth that the irremovable 
limitations of all hopes political and social are 

[145] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

set by the conceptions, principles, and ideals of 
the moral personality, of the moral life and 
its development under the conditions of its 
physical and historical environment. Hopes 
of successful government and of happy and 
prosperous social relations are intolerable so 
long as they do not take these ethical limita- 
tions chiefly into their account. To socialistic 
dreamers and theoretical purists in government, 
and to the so-called practical man under the 
influence of extreme and cynical views of the 
hopeless corruption and irredeemable selfishness 
of human nature, these ethical limitations apply 
with equal cogency and comprehensiveness. 
As to the practicability of the hopes of the 
social reformer the truth remains the same, 
whether he has adopted the method of appeal- 
ing to the nobler ambitions and more unselfish 
desires, or of pandering to the more selfish 
passions and aspirations, whether of the few 
"leaders" of society or of the multitude sup- 
posed to be led. 

The political and social hopes of humanity 
present in this age a spectacle of the most 
amazing and partly discouraging, partly en- 

[146] 



HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

couraging character. These hopes are charac- 
terized as never before in the history of the 
world, by a certain type which, under a great 
variety of modifications, is, nevertheless, sig- 
nificant of them all. They may all be said to 
be stamped with the "hall-mark" of Democracy, 
if we may be allowed to use this word with a 
sufficient indefiniteness and range of applica- 
tion. All over the world the democracy, the 
body of the people hitherto called and consid- 
ered to be "common," and denied what it now 
considers to be its legitimate rights in govern- 
ment and its worthy influence in the social 
aggregate, is forcing its way above the threshold 
of the public consciousness. It is whispering 
and muttering, or uttering hoarse and thunder- 
ous voices, which threaten the old forms of 
ordering both government and society, and 
which encourage high hopes to be realized 
through the introduction of these old forms re- 
formed, or of wholly strange and untried forms. 
This movement, so alarming in some of its 
aspects and so hopeful in other aspects, has not 
only seized upon the more autocratic of the 
governments, and strictly conventionalized of 

[147] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

the social institutions, of Europe; it is a ferment 
in the veins of the body politic, and in the vital 
currents of the domestic life and religious 
rites, of China; it is increasingly powerful in 
Japan and India; it is finding its way into the 
sands of the desert and the jungles of Africa, 
and over the islands of the South Seas. Every- 
where it is accompanied by the uplifting of 
hope and, as well, by the downward drag of 
depressing fears. 

The underlying principle that the limitation 
of hopes political and social is set by moral 
conditions is neglected alike by those who 
dream in hope and by those who recoil in fear 
from the sight of the indisputable facts. This 
neglect is most conspicuous, if not most real 
and pervasive, among those who acclaim the 
name and assume the profession of Socialists. 
The illusoriness of their hopes consists in this. 
They assume that changes in external condi- 
tions and social relations can accomplish what 
is impossible without fundamental changes in 
the character of the human beings who control 
the conditions and who more or less voluntarily 
enter into the relations. Hence it is the im- 

[148] 



HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

provement of measures, enforced by law or by 
the strike, or even by violence, rather than the 
moral improvement of individual men and 
women, to which they attach their hopes of 
betterment. Such hopes are from their very 
nature, and from the first, doomed to disap- 
pointment and to issues fraught with moral 
and social disaster. 

Other hopeful dreams, not to say, wild 
schemings of hope, indulged in by the advo- 
cates of a more democratic form of government, 
or by the patrons of Socialistic plans for the 
reconstruction of social relations, are either 
greatly modified or else wholly forbidden by the 
limitations which applied science puts upon all 
human endeavors. For, our growing knowledge 
of the physical universe and of the nature of 
man shows that most of these dreams can 
never, under the present constitution of Nature, 
physical and personal, be made to take the 
form of wake-a-day truth; that not a few of 
these plans are largely inconsistent with the 
fundamental conditions under which all forms 
of man's social organization come into being 
at all, or prove themselves unable to sustain the 

[149] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

struggle for existence during any considerable 
length of time. That everybody should be 
made rich, or even provided with a satisfactory 
supply of material good by pooling the earnings 
of all; that children should be healthier and 
happier and more moral, when the care of the 
commune usurps the care of the family; that 
domestic purity and happiness should be pro- 
moted by greater freedom of divorce; that 
the ballot-box will be purified by doubling the 
number of voters; that business enterprises will 
be made more surely prosperous by multiplying 
tenfold the number of directors; that the edu- 
cation of the public school, when carefully 
kept uncontaminated by instruction in the 
fundamental truths of morality and religion, 
and under the domination of those who have 
little interest and less wisdom in such important 
matters, can afford a substitute for the training 
of parental discipline, the study of sacred scrip- 
ture at the father's side, and of prayer at the 
mother's knee; that human jealousies and in- 
justices and even the natural inequalities of 
men and women, born of widely differing 
ancestry and with widely differing natural 
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HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

gifts and opportunities, should be adjusted and 
equalized by acts of Congress; all these and 
many similar hopes of the rising Democracy 
and the more extreme of the Socialistic sects, as 
long as the nature of man and the nature of 
things are unchanged, will certainly remain un- 
realized. Worse than this will be the fate of 
the endeavors at their realization, if continued 
in the neglect of the underlying principles and 
lofty ideals of morality and religion. 

Only an unworthy lack of sympathy and 
an excess of cowardice, however, can induce any 
thoughtful observer to look coldly and quite 
hopelessly on the current plans for a future that 
shall be characterized by greatly improved 
governments and profound social reforms. The 
world owes an enormous and as yet unpaid 
debt to its dreamers, not only in the fields of 
science but also and chiefly in the fields of 
political and social institutions. Never before 
in the history of the world have the benefactions 
of the few been so magnificent, the devotions of 
the many so persistent and self-sacrificing, as 
at the present time. Perhaps, we ought also 
to add, that in general, or at least in many 

[151] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

quarters of the world, there has never been 
before so much of moderation in expectation, so 
little of fanaticism and extravagance of hope. 
But the great deficiency in the methods em- 
ployed for the realization of this hoping, and the 
chief source of threatening of its outcome, lie 
in the underestimate of the value, and the 
timid and distrustful practical use, of educative 
processes in the truths of morals and religion, 
and in the application of these truths to the 
conduct of the daily life. Reforms can never 
succeed, which do not direct their chief atten- 
tion and their efforts to the forming of character. 
Human character cannot be formed aright at 
the beginning, or reformed when, as always 
happens, it has indulged itself in the opportunity 
to shape itself awry, without the pruning and the 
vitalizing influences of spiritual truths and 
spiritual ideals. 

In its theory and its practice, the prevalent 
hoping of a Rising Democracy and its socialistic 
leaders, is partly and sadly wrong, but also 
partly and gloriously right. Many of these 
socialistic schemes have identified themselves 
with either an outspoken and contemptuous 

[152] 



HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

rejection of the truths of religion, or with a 
mistaken apprehension and a too narrow inter- 
pretation of what these truths really are. In 
the former case, they have banished God from 
the world both of nature and of men. To the 
leaders of this movement it has too often seemed 
a truth which scarcely stood in need of demon- 
stration, that when the people get control of 
the civil and social institutions, which a 
crafty combination of Church and State has 
hitherto arranged for their subjugation, there 
will be no further need of a God to intermeddle 
with the affairs of mankind. Under the rule 
of the Democracy, science will prove quite 
sufficient having thus her free course and 
being glorified to provide for an unlimited 
increase in the welfare of humanity. 

More often, especially of late, it is the mis- 
taken apprehension and too narrow interpreta- 
tion of moral and religious truths and ideals 
which threatens even the otherwise legitimate 
hopes of the friends of reforms in state and in 
the existing social institutions. This deficiency 
of knowledge and source of weakness in prac- 
tice are shared by the greater number of 

[153] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

the professed Christians or rather members 
of Christian churches who with the best of 
motives have ranged themselves on the side of 
the people in their efforts at reform. By them 
it is rightly claimed that the principle of broth- 
erly sympathy and brotherly love is essentially 
Christian and essentially socialistic as well. 
By them it is proclaimed, both in word and in 
works, and often in both most splendidly, 
that the faith of Christianity must show itself 
in works; and that the great field for its works 
is no narrower than the whole world. For it is 
indeed the people called "common," the race, 
whom God loves and is striving to raise into a 
fuller communion with himself and into the 
fuller enjoyment of the benefits which this 
communion secures. The Kingdom of Heaven 
is essentially democratic; it cannot come with- 
out the uplift of the whole people in the favor 
and the service of its King. 

But there are two respects in which we can 
commend neither the doctrine nor the practice 
of these good souls. For, while the religion 
of Jesus aims to bear fruit in various kinds 
of worldly welfare, its essential " other- world- 

[154] 



HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

liness" is the fundamental characteristic which 
the ardent reformer is quite too apt to lose out 
of sight. Its practice would indeed deliver men 
from a vast burden of sicknesses and other 
kindred ills; but it does not promise to banish 
any of these ills from the limitations and neces- 
sities of the present life. The just and fair 
treatment of all which it commands, would 
indeed remove that immense burden of poverty 
which the avarice of the few or of the majority, 
the greed of the corporations or of the leaders 
of the labor unions, is so ready to lay upon the 
shoulders of their fellow men. But the re- 
ligion of Jesus does not promise to banish pov- 
erty and the endurance of its privations from 
among mankind. Its promise is of patience 
and grace in the bearing of these and other 
kindred evils. Its command forbids the vol- 
untary infliction of them by one man on his 
neighbor, by so-called superior tribes on so-called 
inferior, by powerful nations on nations that 
are weaker. It encourages the hope, and gives 
promise of the arrival, of better times in this 
world, for all the people; but its peculiar prom- 
ises are other-worldly; its kingdom remains 

[155] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

forever where it was left by its founder, not 
of this world, but of the world of the spirit, the 
Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of God. 

The other misapprehension which character- 
izes the democratic and socialistic hopes of the 
day, even as those hopes are entertained by 
multitudes of good Christian people, concerns 
the method of the religion of Jesus. In this 
respect, this religion is like all religion, like 
religion essentially considered. Religion deals 
primarily with the individual, in his individual 
relations, in his utter loneliness before God. 
The one question which it presses is this ques- 
tion: "What is your standing with God?" 
"Are you right with Him?" The one reform 
which it urges upon every human being is the 
forming of one's own spirit after the pattern 
of the Spirit that is Divine. Attempts at reform 
in the name of religion, or which call to their 
aid the forces of religion, while neglecting this 
great truth, can never hope to succeed. In 
their democratic and socialistic movements, 
they carry this question of self-reform straight 
to every human soul. And the rewards which 
they promise to the individual, or to the society, 

[156] 



HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

or to the nation, that wills to reform itself in 
this way, are primarily the rewards of the 
spirit that has placed itself in right relations 
to the Spiritual Source of every form of real 
good. 

While, then, we, too, have generous welcome 
and high hopes for the modern movements 
toward securing more of the good things of this 
life for all the people by improved government, 
and by changes for the better in social relations, 
our welcome cannot be too unconditional or 
our hopes too extravagant, if we aim to rest 
in the reasonable and safe attitude to the move- 
ments themselves. Hopes political and social, 
even high hopes, are permissible; but in order 
to be reasonable, they must be controlled by 
the ideals and principles of morality and re- 
ligion, and tempered by the wisdom which 
comes only from the ages of the experiences of 
human history. 

There are hopeful indications on the whole, 
not a few that many of the promoters of this 
phenomenon which we have ventured to call 
the " universal rise of the Democracy," both in 
high stations and in low stations, and consider- 

[157] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

able numbers of their followers, are coming to 
realize the inevitable limitations of their hopes, 
and the indispensable conditions of the ful- 
filment of them so far as they are capable of 
fulfilment at all. "Seated in the place which 
I occupy to-day," said not long ago the President 
of the French Academy, on welcoming the poet 
M. Paul Bourget to its membership, "Renan, 
on receiving Cherbuliez, spoke of the old 
faiths which he believed to be disappearing 
and said: 'It is the formulas to which, never- 
theless, we owe the remains of our virtues. 
We live of a shadow, of the perfume of an 
empty vase. After us they will live from the 
shadow of a shadow.' . . . He spoke thus 
thirty-two years ago, and behold the sacred 
vase, the Grail from which our forefathers 
drew strength and hope, filling again. New 
generations are rising for whom afresh the 
height is peopled with stars, generations whose 
best representatives are, while insisting on the 
verification of thought in life, yet again be- 
lieving while not ceasing to know." 

About the same time, M. Defrenne, president 
of the alumni of the Normal School of Paris, 

[158] 



HOPES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 

who had years before publicly proclaimed that 
he regarded God as merely the superstition of 
an early and unscientific age, made the following 
significant confession: "The methods of educa- 
tion generally employed to-day have lost their 
attractiveness in emptying themselves of re- 
ligious tradition; for the religious tradition, be- 
ing essentially the human tradition, is eminently 
fitted to train men." "I avow," he goes on to 
say, "to our confusion and our shame, the pov- 
erty of the teaching which we give our scholars, 
the narrowness of spirit that characterizes 
much of the matter which we put in their hands, 
the baseness of soul in publishers and authors, 
which certain changes in the manuals witness 
to; finally, the pure ignominy of certain falsi- 
fications." 

But the same kind of dissatisfaction is not 
only permeating the most thoughtful observers 
of the deficiencies of our own existing system 
of education, both academic and public, but 
here as elsewhere, it is finding expression in the 
councils of the settlement-workers and of the 
labor-unions. In the former the impression is 
gathering strength that without making fuller 

[159] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

use of the religious motive, and raising the 
standard of their moral ideals, the rescue of 
the unfortunate and the reform of the criminal 
is a practically hopeless task. And do we not 
hear that the labor-unions are not altogether 
strange to the voice which proclaims Jesus as 
the "working-man's friend"? 



160] 



CHAPTER VI 
THE HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

HE feeling from which, as from a root, 
springs every form of the complex 
JLL emotion of hope, is the desire for some 
kind of known or imagined good. It is desire 
which is the spur of every form of human en- 
deavor. Without this spur continually thrust 
into his side, the lazy animal man would remain 
content under conditions where supply barely 
sufficed for maintaining the needs of a bare 
existence. Progress in every form of industry, 
art, and conquest over the obstacles opposed to 
the completeness of the spiritual life, would be 
at an end. Especially would the aspirations 
and ambitions which incite and forever stimu- 
late all attempts at realizing the perfectibility 
of the personal life cool to a degree below which 
this life could no longer exist, much less make 
any noteworthy growth. Dissatisfaction with 
the present, the refusal to rest content with the 
measure of good already attained, while imagi- 

[161] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

nation persists in picturing the allurements of 
a good so much beyond, that is, at least, pos- 
sible of attainment, is, therefore, a state of 
mind which is the necessary antecedent or the 
constant accompaniment of every form of hope. 

All this is mere common-place in theory and 
practical maxim, so far as the cherishing of the 
lower forms of human hoping is concerned. 
He who is satisfied with his scanty ration of 
black bread, hopes not for an increase in wages 
or for an improved crop from his small plot of 
ground. The hope for more comfortable and 
decent clothing must be preceded by a distaste 
for filth and rags. The expectations which are 
held forth by promoters of all manner of cor- 
porations, by leaders of labor-unions, and by 
guilds of artisans, or organizations of grangers; 
all economic hopes are started and nourished 
by unsatisfied desire. The same thing is quite 
as true of hopes scientific, political, and social. 

With regard to these lower forms of hoping, 
however, we have already seen that they must 
submit to certain limitations, in the interests 
of morality and of common-sense, if they are 
to receive the approbation of being called quite 

[162] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

reasonable, or even, in not a few instances, at 
all permissible. It may be reasonable to ex- 
pect the addition of cheese and garlic to one's 
ration of black bread; and that every laborer 
shall have meat once a week, or (more timidly, 
pace the beef -trust and the exigencies of cattle- 
raising) every day; but the indefinite extension 
of the luxuries of the table so as to meet the 
unlimited desires of a people, all of whom have 
become epicures, is scarcely an object for rea- 
sonable hoping. This kind of desires, and the 
hopes they kindle and nourish, are in their very 
nature strictly limited, and should be self-con- 
trolled. Such is the decision reached by con- 
sent both of moral consciousness and of sound 
common-sense. 

The same thing is not quite true at least, 
it is not true in the same way of hopes sci- 
entific, political, and social. Such hopes are 
not diminished in their permissibility and rea- 
sonableness by the limits encountered in the 
stages of their origins and in their early devel- 
opment. We do not say to science, "Now that 
you know so much about this or that force or 
law of nature, you ought to be satisfied and 

[163] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

henceforth strictly control your desire for fur- 
ther knowledge." Having learned within such 
limits of accuracy the distance of the sun from 
the earth, or the speed of light, or the nature of 
radio-active substances; we do not ask, "What 
is the use of trying to know more?" Having 
gained some facts with regard to the localiza- 
tion of cerebral functions, we are not halted 
by the inquiry, "Why try to localize them 
more accurately?" Even less do we recom- 
mend ceasing to try to discover the causes and 
cure of cancer, because some progress has been 
made in this field of etiology and therapeutics. 
We no longer rebuke the most audacious specu- 
lations of science as to the origins and funda- 
mental principles governing the workings of 
the universe's mechanism, on the ground that 
to speculate too curiously will be likely to offend 
the jealous gods, and will induce them to trouble 
the welfare of men anent their too ambitious 
projects. In fact, the more we know, the more 
we want to know. For the desire of knowledge 
feeds upon itself; and the call to self-control 
in the hopes it engenders is not directed toward 
limiting the extent of those hopes, but, the 
[164] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

rather toward regulating the manner of their 
gratification and the practical uses made of 
the rewards which never more than incom- 
pletely satisfy them. 

This characteristic of indefinite growth to 
the desire that awakens the dissatisfaction, to 
which, in turn, the fulfilment of hope offers 
only a partial and temporary appeasement, is 
yet more obvious in the case of the nobler 
hopes political and social. There are, indeed, 
instances of government notably that of 
ancient China, and shall we add? modern Ger- 
many where a rarely complete satisfaction 
with themselves has partially paralyzed the 
effort for any radical improvement. But the 
desire of perfecting the politics of any country, 
when thoroughly awakened, is one of those 
desires which it is difficult to bring to an end 
by limiting them to any objective, short of a 
complete realization. And political perfection 
is not a goal which seems very near to the 
stages on the road already reached by any of 
the existing governments. Therefore, we think 
it wise and fair to say: "One must not expect 
perfection in one's government, be it that of 

[165] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

an autocracy, a constitutional monarchy, a 
republic, or a pure democracy." The ideal 
may be set in that really fine and stimulating 
phrase: "A government of the people, by the 
people, and for the people." But until all the 
people are reasonable in their desires, wise in 
their measures, and moral in their aims, such 
an ideal will only, at a distance far away, realize 
their hopes. Desires for political improvement, 
however, should not cease to be stimulated, 
and themselves to stimulate endeavors that 
look toward continually better results in hope. 
And no condition is less hopeful for any form 
of human government than to get the impres- 
sion that it alone is perfect, or pretty nearly 
perfect; and that the outside world is, in com- 
parison, only barbarian. 

Even more obvious and emphatically true 
is much of what has just been said, when ap- 
plied to the hope of social betterment. This 
hope, when genuine, arises out of the most 
altruistic desires and ambitions; it needs only 
wisdom in order to place it among the noblest 
of the hopes of the best of the race. Indeed, 
as has already been hinted, it is itself closely 

[166] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

related to the religious hope of a Divine King- 
dom. Nothing partial and final fully satisfies 
this admirable hope. The ideal of the socially 
perfect life for the individual and for the race 
is an ideal which lifts itself still more unattain- 
ably high, the nearer we think ourselves to have 
devised plans for attaining it. This ambition 
for social perfection, for the completion of the 
ideal relations between individuals as existing 
together in society, the only way in which 
personality can be developed, or indeed come 
into being at all, has a sort of divine permis- 
sion to allure without ever fulfilling its seeming 
promise to yield itself to man's grasping after it. 
The desire of it is never finally circumscribed; 
the hope of it is never fully satisfied; but by 
being left unsatisfied, the hope itself is never 
finally quenched. It is ever being disappointed; 
but it is never quite disappointed, disap- 
pointed, that is, once for all. 

In this description we cannot fail to recog- 
nize something which belongs inseparably to 
the ambitions of the artist in every form of 
art. Dissatisfaction is the characteristic of 
the artistic temperament. Its hopes are never 

[167] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

fully realized. This is because they are the 
hopes of completeness, the hopes that, in order 
to be quite realized, must achieve the ideal. 
But it is of the very nature of the ideal, that it 
does not assume in the mind of man at once, or 
at any one time, an absolutely fixed and final 
form. Thus Newton before his death speaks 
of himself as "a child picking up a few shells 
on the shore while the great ocean of truth lay 
undiscovered before him." Michelangelo passes 
away, a "life- wearied and labor-hardened man," 
but praising the limitless beauties of the Chris- 
tian religion and the unattainable power and 
mysteries of art. And Beethoven, after having 
finished the Ninth Symphony and the Missa 
Solemnis, laments: "I feel as if I had written 
scarcely more than a few notes." 

This passion for perfection is at the height 
of its nobility and strength only when it has 
for its object the attainment of the ideals of 
morality and religion. The desire for moral 
completeness, which the especial terminology 
of religion converts into a longing for a "full 
salvation," when once fairly aroused, intro- 
duces into the Self a never-ceasing and never 

[1681 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

quite appeased dissatisfaction with itself. The 
soul that aims at moral perfection can be satis- 
fied with nothing less than perfection. The 
spirit that once has a taste of salvation can 
never desire less than a "full salvation." As 
with all other similar ambitions which have in 
themselves the essence of infinity in measure 
of quantity and of time, so this passion for 
moral completion must either lead the spirit 
on in hope, or cause it to react in indifference, or 
to sink down in despair. It is to the encour- 
agement of the hope which responds to this 
passion, by the way of pointing out not only 
its abstract permissibility but even its prac- 
tical reasonableness, that we now direct our 
attention. 

The historical persistence and magnitude of 
the hope of moral perfection, the "hope of sal- 
vation," both as cherished by the individual 
person for himself, and by the many for the 
many, or by the "good few" for the race, is an 
impressive fact. Modern physical science, and 
human history in most of its records and in 
many of its aspects, would lead us to minimize 
the importance of the individual, and empha- 

[169] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

size the insignificance of his hopes. As affect- 
ing the great whole, what recks it whether one 
or more individuals get their wings scorched 
and fall to the ground, having had the hardi- 
hood to fly too near the central Sun of all spirit- 
ual light and truth? And, indeed, how dare 
this grovelling animal, weighted down with a 
burden of petty ambitions, fears, disappoint- 
ments, and cares, aspire to the realization of a 
hope like this? Yet, one impressive answer 
to the inquiry intended to test the reasonable- 
ness of such presumptuous daring is the fact 
that man does so dare. 

A certain hopeful attitude toward the ideal 
of moral completeness, a certain kind of the 
hope of redemption, has by no means been con- 
fined to Christianity alone. Even the Orphic 
Mysteries, with their taint of heathenish and 
non-religious rites and conceptions, aroused and 
ministered to the beginnings of this hope. And 
there are religions of redemption, religions of 
salvation, which antedate the birth of Christ. 
"How shall a man," asks the Zend-Avesta, 
"stand right with the Father of the pure 
world?" And, again, "What is the Way of 

[170] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

Salvation, the way back to the All-Father?" 
It is the moral completeness that is entitled to 
be called "salvation" which the doctrines of 
Buddhism hold before the expectant soul; it 
is the hope of this salvation which these doc- 
trines desire to commend to the soul. Beyond 
all other religions, Christianity is the religion 
of redemption. It awakens and stimulates the 
passion for moral completeness. It promises 
as the goal of its devotion the fulness of salva- 
tion. And its fundamental law for the regula- 
tion of conduct is the word of Jesus: "Be ye 
therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven 
is perfect." 

We are not at the moment commending this 
hope of moral perfection to the individual, or 
expounding the conditions upon which he must, 
if at all, realize the fulfilment of the desire for 
salvation. We are simply calling attention to 
the existence and influence in human history of 
the desires and ambitions to which this hope 
speaks words of encouragement and confidence. 
Reference to this remarkable fact was made in 
an earlier volume of this series, in a Chapter 
on "The Weight and Worth of Moral Ideals." 

[171] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

It was then declared that "the ideas of ethics 
are not mere ideas, or mental images of real 
things and actual occurrences, revived in 
memory and reconstructed with an attempt at 
scientific precision by an act of imagination. 
These ideas are, the rather, of the sort which 
artists construct; for, indeed, moral conscious- 
ness is given to dreaming, has no little of ses- 
thetical quality, and tends to evoke many pic- 
tures of things the exact likeness of which is 
not to be found 'on sea or land' or in any civic 
or social construction. This kind of work on 
the part of moral consciousness is no modern 
affair, or rare gift belonging to the most highly 
gifted or civilized races. It belongs to the hu- 
man race, to the personal species, to man as a 
spirit and an artist of creative talent in matters 
of the spirit. And it is an historical fact of 
supreme significance that, even in the lowest 
stages of human development and among the 
most uncivilized and savage tribes, in matters 
of conduct and character a distinction is always 
recognized between what in fact is, and the 
idea or ideal of what ought to be. This is to 
say that, strictly speaking, moral ideas are 
[172] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

ideas of value. The feeling of moral obligation 
is a binding to something which has a worth of 
its own. The reason for this estimate of worth 
may, indeed, lie outside of the act to which the 
feeling is directed; but this reason carries with 
it the weight of an obligation only as it has 
connection with something which has a worth 
of its own intrinsic moral worth" ("What 
Ought I to Do? "p. 154 f.). 

On reiterating these statements, in order 
that their fuller significance in the present con- 
nection may be the better appreciated, it is 
necessary to call attention, yet more emphati- 
cally, to the intrinsically unlimited nature of 
the desires and ambitions in which the hope of 
moral perfection has its perpetual living spring. 
He who has lost the ambition for a still improved 
moral and spiritual development no longer 
strives and hopes. The self-satisfied Self is in 
the most hopeless of all conditions with respect 
to the progressive realization of the desire for 
moral perfection. The faith of religion that 
has degenerated into a present confidence in 
the already accomplished completion of the 
process of salvation is no longer entitled, to the 

[173] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

hope of an ideally perfect salvation in the 
future. 

But this hope which stretches forward to- 
ward an ever advancing and rising ideal, and 
which is satisfied to follow with eagerness and 
courage an object that seems ever farther from 
complete possession, needs to have reason on 
its side, as do all other justifiable, not to say, 
permissible human hopes. It can answer for 
itself; though not so much by way of bringing 
forward facts to prove its satisfactory realiza- 
tion in the past, as by way of expounding its 
own intrinsic nature and pointing to what in 
fact its worth appears to be to the aspiring 
spirit of man. The faiths on which the hope 
reposes have evidential value in themselves. 
To ask after the worth of moral completeness, 
that incomparable good which sets the goal 
and prescribes the limitations and laws for all 
the conduct and the evolution of the personal 
life, is to ask a question which is either utterly 
unmeaning, or which carries its own answer 
with it, and needs not to borrow reasons from 
the outside. 

"All the values that are ascribable to right 

[174] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

conduct, in itself and in its consequences, have 
their final issue in the nature of personal life, 
and in the relations which can exist only be- 
tween persons. Beyond this life itself, there is 
nothing that has value or that can furnish any 
standard of values. Beyond the value of shar- 
ing in the highest and best of this personal life, 
there is nothing, either as a type of existence 
or as a continuous state, that possesses any 
real worth. 'What shall a man give (or take) 
for his personal life?' To answer * Nothing,' 
as though one were estimating values in a com- 
parative way, does not go to the depths of such 
a question. For not only is there nothing in 
value to be compared with this life, but there is 
no standard of comparison outside of, or be- 
yond, the issues of this life. It embodies all 
values in itself. If we take the point of view of 
him who put before us the question, 'How 
much better is a man than a sheep?' after the 
question mark we can only place the sign of 
infinity. So far as the sheep has any value, 
it must be stated in terms of personal worth. 
For we are not asking the market price of the 
two of the sheep in the shambles and the 

[175] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

human slave upon the auction block. In asking 
the question, we are not simply admitting the 
superior, but the rather the incomparable, 
worth of personal life " (" What Ought I to Do?" 
p. 264 f.). 

From this estimate which the moral beliefs 
give to the worth of the moral ideal that is, 
the ideal of moral completeness, of the perfec- 
tion of the personal life it follows that the 
hope of possessing this ideal (the desire which 
pursues in hope, the expectation that trusts 
the increasing reward of approaching the ful- 
filment of this hope) carries the grounds of its 
reasonableness in itself. Is it not reasonable 
for the spirit to seek in hope that which, for 
it, is the supremely valuable good? To the 
mind which has the faith, the question as to 
the reasonableness of the corresponding hope, 
promptly and satisfactorily answers itself. 

But you ask yet again: "Is it then reason- 
able for one to pursue in hope a good that is, 
in its very nature, essentially unattainable in 
its completeness?" By all means, Yes. Moral 
growth is attainable; and from the point of 
view of the moral ideal it is for the individual 

[176] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

person the supreme good. (The still more in- 
clusive truth that this good for the individual 
cannot be attained or approached or even con- 
ceived of, except as embracing and enfolded by 
the corresponding social good, we omit for the 
present to take into account.) But like every 
ideal good and more reasonably and abun- 
dantly than any other form of the ideal this 
one of moral completeness, when approached, 
never ceases to retreat in a divinely alluring 
way. The good of following it is realized at 
every step of the pursuit by the soul that con- 
tinues to believe in it as the supremely valuable 
good. Were it to be fully attained, it would 
then cease to stimulate ambition and to secure 
the pursuit of itself in hope. It is this sort of 
worth, both ideal and for the practical uses of 
the personal life, which characterizes all that 
has most of intrinsic and eternal worth. It is 
known as bearing the image of the Supreme 
Ideal; it is followed because conceived of, as 
it were, sub specie aeternitatis. 

Such truths concerning the nature and the 
hopes of completeness for the personal life, 
take a form that seems clearer to the popular 

[177] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

consciousness and that appeals more powerfully 
to the heart and to the will, when they are 
presented in terms of the religious experience. 
Then we speak of the faith on which the "hope 
of salvation" reposes, and of the reasonable- 
ness and assurance of such a hope. This ex- 
perience entitles one to say: "I believe that I 
am 'in the way' of being saved; and by fol- 
lowing this way (the 'path of salvation') I am 
permitted to indulge the reasonable, not to say 
the assured hope, of ever drawing nearer to a 
'full salvation.'" 

In all the religions that minister at all suc- 
cessfully to the hope of salvation the door to 
that hope is opened by an act of faith. So true 
is this that faith, when considered as the atti- 
tude of filial piety, the relation of affectionate 
trust, is identified with religion, subjectively 
considered. The man who has experience of 
this faith is the religious man. To employ a 
vulgar but expressive phrase: he "has got re- 
ligion" by placing himself in the filial attitude 
toward his God. This faith is also called "sav- 
ing faith"; because it sets the one who has it 
in the path of salvation; and he who persists 

[178] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

in holding by it, is guided in this path. Such 
a faithful soul enters upon and continues in 
the "way of salvation." But faith cannot 
save the soul, or even start it well in the way 
of salvation, unless it becomes the ministering 
source of hope. "We are saved by (or in) 
hope." The wholly and finally discouraged be- 
liever if, indeed, such a permanent mixture 
of incompatibles as faith and despair were pos- 
sible would scarcely merit to be called one 
rightly started in the way of salvation. 

This form of hoping, too, like all forms of 
the emotion, is subject to an examination of 
the grounds of its reasonableness. Primarily 
considered, such grounds are to be found in the 
character of the beliefs and faiths which have 
awakened the hope, and which will be con- 
stantly "drawn upon," as the phrase is in other 
somewhat similar matters of individual experi- 
ence, to nourish and to guide the hope. If the 
faith is not sound, the hope will be false. If 
the faith is sound, the hopes based upon it are 
thus rendered reasonable, essentially so, if 
not in every particular. For religious hopes, 
like all other emotions of this kind, often de- 

[179] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

mand certain magnificent and strange and al- 
most fantastic constructs of imagination on 
which to feed themselves if they are expected 
to grow. Thus heaven may take the form of a 
city with gates of pearl and streets paved with 
gold, rather than a condition better than it can 
"enter into the heart of man to conceive" and 
than any human tongue can undertake to 
express. 

In the individual believer the way of salva- 
tion is entered upon by an experience which 
brings the conviction of its own value and effi- 
ciency with itself. With regard to its practical 
value the experience of a genuine religious faith 
is its own proof. It proves its value by its 
work. Excrescences of beliefs and lingering 
superstitions not a few may cling to it; much 
growth in knowledge and testing by success or 
failure in the conduct of the religious life, may 
be necessary through long stretches of time and 
by the help of many bitter mistakes, in order 
to slough them off. But if the sound kernel 
of faith is there, the conditions of hope are 
established beyond the necessity of denial or 
rebuke. 

[180] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

It is quite time to call back our thoughts to 
the very limited nature of the essay which we 
have undertaken to make. The theological 
doctrine of the Way of Salvation, whether as 
derived from a comparative study of all the 
religions which provide for the men of their 
faith instruction on this matter of chief con- 
cern (the religions of redemption, properly so- 
called), or from Christianity, with its incom- 
parable system of religious truth and of helps 
to the achievement of moral perfection, the 
theological doctrine of "The Way," is not 
the task of this essay. Its attempt is of some- 
thing far less difficult and dealing with a less 
exalted theme. We have raised as the last of 
four important practical questions, this one: 
"What may I hope?" In the suggestions 
thrown out toward the partial answer of this 
question, the psychological nature of the emo- 
tion of hoping, its rights and limitations in the 
culture of the personal life, have been partially 
investigated; and some things which seemed 
pertinent and useful have been added as to the 
assurance, the reasonableness, and the practical 
uses of different kinds of hopes. 

[181] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

In the course of this investigation there have 
been disclosed certain ambitions and desires 
that grasp after the ideal good revealed to the 
human mind by the reasoned faiths of morality 
and religion. Among them appears the longing 
of the human spirit or at least, if this is all 
we are entitled to say, the longing of some 
human spirits for moral completeness. In 
these souls, at least, arises a passion of desire for 
that relief from moral imperfection and weak- 
ness, from "missing the mark," from sinning 
and the bitter fruits of sinning, which in the 
language of religion appears only as the result 
of a completed Divine work of redemption. To 
be sure, in the lower stages of the race's moral 
evolution, these desires and ambitions are ob- 
scure, perplexed, and even gross in their con- 
ception of what is really wanted; if indeed they 
exist at all. But that they do come into exist- 
ence, at seasons and in spots, as it were, when 
conditions are favorable to their upspringing, 
there can be no doubt. And whenever they 
appear with any good degree of strength and 
purity, they bear the marks of infinity and 
eternity. They are the fruits of the spirit that 

[182] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

is in man, the potentiality of a development 
which shall bring man nearer to the moral like- 
ness of the perfect Ethical Spirit whom a rea- 
soned belief presents to his mind as the object 
of trust and devoted service. It is not without 
significance that they who have most realized 
this potentiality are called "saints" by their 
fellow men. 

No other facts in the history of the evolution 
of personal life are more potent and noteworthy 
than are the facts which bear witness to these 
spiritual desires and ambitions. They have 
sent multitudes to wandering along many by- 
paths, seeking blindly for the "way of salva- 
tion." To discover and point out that way, 
and to induce men to follow in it, has been the 
special, appropriate task of the religions of 
redemption. As the results of their seeking, 
they minister hope to these ambitions and de- 
sires. For this kind of hoping is as much an 
impressive phenomenon and a forceful fact of 
human history as are the desires and ambitions 
to which the hope aims to minister. Our mod- 
est task would be incomplete, then, would in- 
deed be relatively unworthy of attention at all, 

[183] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

if we neglected to give special importance to 
the reasonableness, and to the permissibility 
Yes, even to the obligatory character, of this 
form of hoping. But we repeat, it is not a 
part of the attempted answer to the question, 
What may I hope? as a problem of which some 
satisfactory practical solution is eminently de- 
sirable, to present the fuller form assumed by 
the theological doctrine of Salvation, and of 
its divinely ordained Way. We shall treat 
this hope as we have treated other hopes when 
their reasonableness is inquired into from the 
points of view taken by the science of psychology 
and by that exercise of reflective thinking 
which is called the philosophy of religion. 

From these points of view, the first thing to 
be noticed with reference to testing the reason- 
ableness of the hope of salvation is this: it is 
by its very nature adapted to secure its own 
realization. A hope looking toward complete- 
ness of moral and spiritual life, which may be 
attained by following in the right way, is itself 
as has already been said a saving hope. It 
is of essentially therapeutic character. It has 
healing value. The soothing, as well as stimu- 

[184] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

lating character, essential to this emotion, may 
be made resourceful in every form of human 
endeavor. Indifference and despair are prejudi- 
cial to all kinds of health bodily, mental, and 
spiritual; and to the recovery of health, when it 
has been temporarily impaired or lost. Sick- 
ness of heart, and feebleness of will, mean the 
same thing as loss of hope in any form of human 
life; but above all in the life of the spirit when 
it sets out on the path toward the winning of 
its ideal conditions and limitless rewards. So 
that it may be said in common parlance, though 
from the psychological point of view: "There 
is no sense in entering upon the Way of Salva- 
tion unless one may have some good degree of 
hope of attaining the end of Salvation." To 
seek moral completeness without any hope in 
the process of completing would, indeed, be 
folly that could be scarcely better acquitted of 
the moral obliquity attaching to all folly, than to 
cherish no desire for moral completeness. But 
hope lends a helping hand in the conduct of the 
business, that is legitimate and obligatory for 
every person; because it is, in fact, the business 
of realizing, as far as possible, the ideal of per- 

[185] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

sonality. The hope of salvation is, in fact, a 
reasonable hope, because it is, in fact, an efficient 
hope. 

But both faith and hope, and the claim to 
reasonableness, as well as the practical efficiency 
of both, in their effort to realize the ideal of 
moral completeness (the salvation of the spirit 
that is in man), depend upon the success they 
have in guiding the desires and ambitions into 
the right Way of Salvation. That faith and 
hope stand at the entrance to this way, and that 
they are indispensable to guide and cheer all 
along the way, needs no further proof or even 
remark. But at this point the importance of 
right opinions as to the "cult" of religion comes 
prominently into view. The primary object of 
this cult, which is essentially the same in every 
form of religion, but which attains by far its 
highest degree of clearness and purity in the 
Christian religion, is thus stated by De la 
Saussaye: it is "to maintain the proper and 
desirable relationship between man and God, 
and to reinstate it when it has become clouded." 
Thus understood, however, the nature of any 
particular form of religious cult will necessarily 

[186] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

be determined by the conception of what is 
"the proper and desirable relationship" be- 
tween man and God; while the conception of 
this relationship will depend chiefly upon the 
conception of God. If the divine beings, with 
whom it is proposed to cultivate the proper and 
desirable relations, are conceived of as merce- 
nary or of doubtful and capricious character, 
then sacrifices, incantations, magical formulas, 
and prescribed gorgeous or bloody rites, will be 
assumed to be necessary in order to keep them 
friendly. But if the way prescribed by Jesus, 
with his spiritual conception of God as Father, 
be followed, then, whatever outward forms 
are adopted as matters of convenience or of 
concession to the limitations of the human 
imagination, the worship must be "in the spirit 
and in truth." 

The complex nature of the feelings that enter 
into the practice of every developed form of 
religious cult was recognized by Darwin when 
he wrote: "The feeling of religious devotion is 
a highly complex one, consisting of love, com- 
plete submission to an exalted and mysterious 
superior, a strong sense of dependence, rever- 

[1871 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

ence, fear, gratitude, hope for the future, and 
perhaps other elements." (As quoted by Max 
Miiller, Gifford Lectures for 1888, p. 69, note.) 
It is no wonder then that the various attempts 
to classify the phenomena of man's religious 
life according to the nature of the religious 
cult employed, like most similar attempts at 
classification, have been far from successful. 
But there are two forms prescribed for follow- 
ing the Way of Salvation that are rightly given 
the most prominent place in all the greater re- 
ligions; and that are even indicated by some 
of the most thoughtful sentiments uttered by 
devotees of the lower forms of religion. These 
are Prayer and Sacrifice. The nature and 
efficiency of both, in promoting the interests 
of moral completeness, depend upon the con- 
ception of God, in communion with whom 
prayer is the medium, and the perpetual sacri- 
fice of the Self is the service, leading toward 
the end of salvation. 

From the point of view of the history and 
the philosophy of religion we are justified in 
agreeing with Tiele when he declares ("Ele- 
ments of the Science of Religion," Second 

[188] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

Series, p. 133): "The most general, the most 
constant, and therefore the most important 
element in worship is Prayer." "Nor do we 
know," he adds, "of any religion, however de- 
veloped, in which prayer does not occur." 
"Thoughts," said the Mandan in North America 
with reference to the sun-god, the progenitor 
of his race, "are the best means of reaching 
him." From a much lower conception of the 
nature of worship and its place in the Way 
of Salvation arises the syllogism which is of 
almost universal currency among the people 
of India: 

"The whole world is under the power of the gods. 
The gods are under the power of the mantras, 
The mantras are under the power of the Brahman; 
Brahman is therefore our God." 

The nature of prayer as a psychological and 
philosophical necessity for every one desiring, 
in hope, to follow the Way of Salvation, is of 
a quite different order from that provided for 
by any maxims similar to those quoted above. 
The office of prayer is to put the soul of man 
into communion with God. And without such 
communion there can be no hope of finding 

[189] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

or successfully pursuing the right Way. The 
path leads through, is, in fact, included in, 
the life of such spiritual communion. Some- 
thing like this belief is found in the naive, the 
so-called "natural," religious consciousness of 
man as he stands in the dawning of the spiritual 
life. It is the spoken word which is everywhere 
thought of as the most intelligible and powerful 
means of communication between man and 
his fellow man. It is speech, with its appeal 
and its answer, which facilitates most speedily 
and most completely the communion of which 
personal life, as needing much more and sup- 
plying much more, in distinction from merely 
animal life, is capable. "Probably," says 
Brinton ("The Religion of Primitive Peoples," 
p. 89), "the word is regarded as a magical power 
in itself." This is the idea of the mantra. It 
is a mystical formula to which the gods can- 
not help paying attention, as the saying is. 
But when in the individual, or in the com- 
munity of believers, religion has become some- 
thing far different from magic, with its low- 
thoughted conception of bargaining with the 
divine beings, or compelling them with mantras, 
[190] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

then the inward word of prayer becomes rea- 
son's most appropriate and efficient way of 
establishing communion between man and God. 
Like all the greater hopes, however, or 
rather, as becomes the very nature of the emo- 
tion of hoping in general, the hope of sal- 
vation has its sources in certain faiths. The 
ministry of this hope which is found in the 
communion of the human spirit with the Divine 
Spirit depends for its reasonableness on two 
beliefs: on that of the receptivity of man, and 
that of the Divine grace. The hope of an 
ever-nearer approach to moral completeness is 
justified only if the belief in the capacity of 
man for an unlimited moral development is a 
reasonable belief. In Kant's philosophy of 
the Practical Reason, the demand of the moral 
law for such moral completeness was considered 
to be convincing proof of the Being of God, the 
author of the law; and also of the immortal des- 
tiny of man as having capacity, as a Free Will, 
for such completeness. The Kantian argument 
is not a demonstration; and the emphasis must 
be changed as respects man's part in the process 
necessary to the progressive realization of the 

[191] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

hope of moral completeness. Not by the 
power of his own decision alone, even when 
followed by most strenuous endeavor, is man 
capable of a task like that set by the uncon- 
ditional law of the moral life. That it would 
be "easier for a man to cross the gulf of hell 
on a hair than to live without once sinning" 
may be a rough and startling way of stating the 
truth; but the truth is not far otherwise, none 
the less. Man, as born and conditioned in this, 
his earthly environment, has not, in fact, the 
capacity for the requisite moral completeness. 
But he has the unlimited susceptibility for moral 
improvement. Man's attitude must be one 
of willingness to receive, if man's efforts to 
improve are to be undertaken and carried for- 
ward with a reasonable hope. And it is through 
communion with God in prayer that this will- 
ingness takes form and bears its legitimate 
fruits. 

The hope of salvation is made reasonable 
by the inspiration which comes to man's spirit, 
in its need of wisdom and strength, by the way 
of communion with the Spirit of all wisdom and 
all moral power. To say this is not to drag in 

[192] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

the supernatural, or even the supernormal, in 
the fatuous effort to explain phenomena which 
admit of sufficient explanation in terms of that 
which is natural and normal to human experi- 
ence in other spheres of human activity. It is 
not even to draw a hard and fixed line between 
the supernatural and the so-called natural. It 
is simply to maintain at its full value, as neces- 
sary to all understanding of every phase and 
every fact of the so-called "natural," the indwell- 
ing presence and power of a personal Spirit, 
who is essentially, but not spatially or tempo- 
rally, Super, as respects all the mechanism with 
the detailed operations of which the positive 
sciences quite lawfully busy themselves. To 
refuse to recognize the inspiration to courage 
and the guidance in wisdom which they ex- 
perience who keep the terms of communion 
with the Source of inspiration, is no more com- 
mendable, from the scientific point of view, 
than to refuse to recognize any other most 
patent class of facts. 

This same hope receives the support of com- 
fort in the disappointments, sorrows, and losses 
that are inescapable in this present life, by the 

[193] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

same avenue of communion with God in prayer. 
Here, too, the theory of such experiences, if 
we are inclined to insist upon a theory and 
to this there is no reasonable objection re- 
quires no denial or neglect of any of the facts 
and laws of the so-called natural order, on 
which the positive sciences so emphatically, 
and often impatiently, insist. A man of science 
may well enough be a man of prayer. And if 
he is sufficiently modest in his scientific claims, 
he may be a very much convinced and eloquent 
advocate of the spiritual benefits of prayer, 
especially by the way of keeping up one's hopes 
of salvation. 

' If now we turn our attention in the other 
direction we recognize at once the intimate 
connection between the reasonableness of the 
hopes inspired and sustained by prayer, and 
the kind of faith in God which is held by the one 
who prays. It is to God as the gracious Re- 
deemer that the prayer of hope is offered. This 
conception of the Divine Being is not one that 
has been suddenly imposed upon the race in a 
sort of thaumaturgic fashion. It is, the rather, 
a conception that has grown strong and glorious 
[194] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

in the religious history of the race, and as sup- 
ported by the reasoned faith of millions of men. 
We find something approaching it in that most 
ancient book in the world, the Maxims of Ani, 
where we read: "Pray humbly with a loving 
heart all the words of which are uttered in secret. 
God will listen to thy words; He will accept 
thy offerings." More abundantly in the prayer 
offered by the great Assyrian monarch to his 
god Marduk: 

"According to thy mercy, Oh Lord, which thou bestowest upon 

all, 

Cause me to love thy supreme rule, 
Implant the fear of thy divinity within my heart, 

Grant to me whatsoever may seem good before thee, 
Since it is thou that dost control my life." 

The doctrine of a redeeming God developed 
in ancient Egypt with the cult of Osiris; and 
prayers to God as the redeemer of the bodies 
and souls of men administered the hope of 
salvation to not a few in the ancient world. 
It was among the Hebrew prophets, however, 
that the conception of Divine Redemption 
took its most glorious form of hope in pre- 
Christian times. To the last, however, this con- 

[195] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

ception was national rather than individual, 
political rather than distinctly spiritual. The 
answer which sprang from the consciousness 
of Jesus was a faith in God as the Redeemer of 
every individual soul that would take toward 
God the attitude of piety; and of the race, 
through the continued proclamation and grow- 
ing efficacy of the offer of redemption. In 
the religion of Christ, as it took shape after 
his death, the Hope of Salvation assumed all the 
marks of a true and complete universality. His 
message is therefore a Gospel, a ministry of the 
hope of salvation. 

"The conception of God as the Redeemer of 
mankind reaches its highest form in Christian- 
ity; and by ' highest form' must be understood 
the form that is most intimate, most effective, 
most comprehensive, and most rational. To 
establish its intimacy an appeal to the experi- 
ence of the Christian believer is the only avail- 
able or conceivable proof; for this quality is 
expressed in the subjective attitude of the 
personal consciousness toward its own weak- 
nesses, miseries, and sins. To feel relief from 
these is to be, so far forth, here and now re- 

[196] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

deemed. From the individual's point of view, 
the redemption is the relief. The efficiency of 
the redemption offered and furnished by Chris- 
tianity may also be in a measure shown his- 
torically; for an appeal may be made to the 
fact that the religion of Christ evinces its own 
essential being in diminishing, as judged by 
all the objective signs, the amount of human 
misery and sin. In similar manner, the com- 
prehensive character of the redemptive process 
is shown both by the essential content of Chris- 
tian truth, with its democratic offer of salva- 
tion, and by its actual entrance into the life 
of humanity, as a redeeming force, irrespective 
of differences of race, of social condition, of 
stages of culture, or even, in a marvellous way, 
of previous moral conditions. And, finally, 
it is the work of Christian apologetics, in the 
broadest meaning of this Study, to show the 
rationality of the Christian doctrine of God 
as the Redeemer" ("Philosophy of Religion," 
Vol. II, p. 4021). 

The ministry to the Hope of Salvation in the 
form of Sacrifice is in its origin and lower stages 
characterized by much of superstition, cruelty, 

[197] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

lust, and selfishness. It has the form of offering 
a bribe, of paying tribute, or even of deceiving 
by a trick. "The Redskin offers his sweat; 
the Black offers his saliva or his teeth; the 
more practical Greek, a lock of his hair, or even 
all of it. The Peruvian pulled out a hair from 
his eyebrow and blew it toward the idol." 
But here again, we must look for the fragrance 
in the blossom and not in the bulb, for the 
purity in the flower and not in the mire out of 
which its stem struggles upward. Thus the 
priest, on approaching the god at Abydos, de- 
clared: "I come before thee, thou Great One, 
after I have purified myself. ... I am a 
prophet, and come to thee in order to do 
what should be done; but I do not come in 
order to do what should not be done." Out 
of this condition of doubt emerges the clearer 
vision of the prophet Micah who sees that 
the Divine One is not pleased "with thousands 
of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil," 
but with justice, mercy, and humility, and 
all in the sight of God. And from this we ad- 
vance to the Christian conception and practice, 
which makes the ideal of sacrifice culminate in 
[198] 



HOPE OF MORAL PERFECTION 

a rational, free, and affectionate surrender of 
man to God; and to the perfection of this 
surrender in a life of devoted service. In this 
form, Sacrifice joins with Prayer, in a ministry 
to the hope of salvation, by effectively pro- 
moting the actual process of salvation. And 
at this point the ideal of moral completeness 
seems nearly or quite to fuse with the purest and 
most comprehensive religious conception of a 
"full salvation." 

If, then, one raises the practical question, 
What may I hope? with reference to that 
ideal of personal life for the individual which 
the faiths of morality picture as moral per- 
fection and the faiths of religion present in 
the conception of Salvation, there should be 
no unsurmountable difficulty in finding an 
answer to the question. Judged by the tests 
appropriate to it, this hope seems reasonable 
enough. It is, indeed, something not to be 
grasped in a sudden and convulsive way. It 
is a prize to be won as the end of a long and 
devoted pursuit, and a faithful use of the appro- 
priate means. But it has the characteristics 
which belong to every kind of an ideal; be- 

[199] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

long, indeed, in the highest degree to this 
highest of all the ideals. It reposes in faiths 
that transcend the world of sense, but are justi- 
fied by the desires, expectations, and confi- 
dences of the spirit that is in man. They are 
not limited, as are the beliefs and hopes which 
have to do with material good, by the condi- 
tions of time and the present environment of 
the sensuous existence. They have the char- 
acteristics that come, as we have frequently 
said, under the conception of eternity (sub 
specie ceternitatis) . The hope that springs from 
these beliefs and faiths requires its own special 
form of culture; and as described and com- 
mended by the religious experience of the race, 
its cult requires communion of the spirit of 
man with the perfect Ethical Spirit of God, in 
prayer, and a life of rational, free, and affection- 
ate surrender, in service. The nature of this 
service will become clearer when disclosed by 
the hope of a Divine Kingdom. 



[200] 



CHAPTER VII 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

'T was a saying of Spinoza that all hope neces- 
sarily involves dread, and every fear implies 
a corresponding hope. This saying would 
seem to apply to the attitude of different in- 
dividuals, and even of different peoples, toward 
the belief in an existence after death. The 
belief itself is well-nigh universal. Indeed, 
Wundt goes so far as to say that all primitive 
races think of the spirit as a sensible existence 
separable from the body, and thus have the 
way paved, as it were, for the expectation that 
this spirit will not cease to live and to manifest 
itself after the death of the body. More par- 
ticularly, an authority on the religion of the 
early Greeks, remarking on the reasons for 
the conjecture that a "soul-cult," "an honoring 
of the spiritual essence which lies hidden in 
man and after his death separates itself for 
an independent existence," belonged to the 
Greek civilization, adds these confident words 

F SOI 1 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

"as, indeed, everywhere on the earth, to the 
most ancient practices of religion." We have 
then a very interesting problem, not only in 
the comparative study of religion but also 
in the nature of the life of religious beliefs and 
emotions, brought to our attention by the fact 
that perhaps fully half of the race have looked 
upon the continuance of existence after death, 
with prevailing fear rather than with any 
approach to a cheerful hope. 

"It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded," 
said Epictetus, "but the fear of pain or death. 
Hence we commend him who says: 

'Death is no ill, but shamefully to die.' 

Courage, then, ought to be opposed to death, 
and caution to the fear of death." It is not, 
however, the "fear of death," which is opposed 
to the hope of immortality, but the fear of 
that which is Beyond. Indeed, when in battle 
or great peril of any sort, and especially in 
articulo mortis, men in general exhibit no great 
fear of dying, in itself considered, if it could 
be so considered. Nature lets her children 
down with great tenderness into the apparent 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

oblivion which follows the loss of all the bodily 
marks of continued consciousness. 

When we inquire into the causes of this dif- 
ference in the attitude of different individuals, 
and indeed of whole peoples, toward what 
follows death in respect of the unavoidable con- 
tinuance of the soul, or spiritual principle be- 
lieved to be separable from the body, the answer 
is not that which those who regard the subject 
from the point of view solely of morality or 
religion would seem bound to expect. This 
is to say that, in fact, the causes of the differ- 
ence do not appear, on examination, to be mainly 
ethical or religious at all. They appear, on 
the contrary, to have little to do with morality 
or religion. Both before and after the destiny 
of the soul has come to be considered as largely 
influenced, if not wholly determined, by the 
higher and more rational interests, not only 
different individuals but whole peoples show 
singular tendencies in divergent directions, 
either of despondency and dread, or of joyful 
anticipation and of hope. 
*; In the case of individuals, doubtless, much 
account is to be taken of the influence of temper- 

[203] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

ament; much, also, of the conditions of comfort 
or discomfort, and of the common pleasurable 
experiences, or almost constant misery, amidst 
which their life is being spent. Perhaps, also, we 
are quite warranted in speaking of a prevailingly 
hopeful'or desponding temperament as the char- 
acteristic of an entire people. Even in these lat- 
ter days, under the instructions and influence of 
the Christian religion, and amidst the improved 
conditions of secular life, it is by no means 
always the most truly saintly who are most sure 
of their own future happiness. 

The main reason why some look with hope 
and some with great timidity or positive dread 
toward existence after death (it will be noticed 
that we are not as yet speaking of "immortal- 
ity," properly so-called) would seem to be a 
difference in the love of life. And this difference 
in the love of life is itself mainly dependent on 
differences in the experiences of life. Those 
tend toward hope of a continued existence after 
death, who have the love of life; and those are 
apt to love life, who have found life on the 
whole worth living, if not quite positively good. 

What has just been said is illustrated in a 
[204] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

striking way, when we compare the view of 
future existence for the individual held by the 
ancient Egyptians with that of the Indians. It 
cannot be claimed that the moral doctrines of 
the former were any less clear than those of the 
latter; or that their religious convictions and 
tenets were much less advanced. But the 
Egyptians loved life ; and life in ancient Egypt, 
being the "gift" of the manageable and usually 
beneficent Nile, was on the whole a good and 
happy thing; while always, even quite down to 
the present time, drought and famine and the 
awful burden of caste, have made life among 
the countless millions of India an undesirable 
thing. Thus from time immemorial in Egypt 
the "darling idea" of the people has been the 
continuance of the existence of the souls of 
their dead. But the desire of the multitudes 
of India has been "to get off the wheel," to 
the perpetual turning of which in an endless 
round of miserable existences yet more mis- 
erable, if that were possible, than the present 
existence was proving itself to be the remorse- 
less theology and selfish cult of Brahmanism 
had forever consigned them. An elaborate 

[205] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

doctrine of immortality had therefore existed 
from very early times among the Egyptians, 
as is proved by inscriptions on the walls of 
pyramids of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, 
that are as old as 3000 B. c. To the righteous 
one who appeared before the Judge of the 
Dead, the verdict ran: "I give unto thee all 
Life, all Stability, all Power, all Health, and 
all Joy." But from the wicked his heart was 
taken away in punishment; he could not 
have in this condition a quite perfect physical 
existence even. 

In Egypt, however, the conditions of accept- 
ance with the Judge of the Dead, and so of per- 
mission to live on in by no means a "half -bad" 
way, were not impossible or extremely difficult 
to secure. The candidate for immortal life 
must at least be able to say, "I have not robbed, 
nor murdered, nor lied, nor caused any to weep, 
nor insulted the gods." But in India, any 
reasonable hope of a life beyond, that should be 
no worse than the present life had been, was, 
for all except the Brahman, well-nigh unattain- 
able. And with the ancient Egyptian the re- 
ward of righteousness was a real life, a continued 

[206] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

existence in which the individual soul should 
preserve its indentity; while the ideal of im- 
mortality of the Brahminical type was the ab- 
sorption of the individual into Atman, or the 
World-Soul, from which it came forth. Hence 
the way of salvation which Buddhism offered 
to the distressed people of India was the denial 
of the Brahminical doctrine of the substantial 
eternity of the soul, and the need of its salva- 
tion by the Brahminical priesthood and cere- 
monial. Buddhism also feared the existence 
of the soul after death. For the lack of the 
love of life, since life was not known as lovely 
in India, obsessed the new religion as well 
as the old. Hence the pathetic meditation of 
its faith: 

"Subject to birth, old age, disease, 
Extinction will I seek to find, 
Where no decay is ever known, 
Nor death, but all security." 

But Buddhism was powerless in its benevolent 
purpose to relieve the hearts of the people, by 
substituting the hope of immortal life for the 
dread of immortality as a ceaseless living death. 
Not famine, nor battle, nor mortal disease, nor 

[207] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

suicide, can promise success to him who is trying 
"to get off the Wheel." His cry must ever be, 

"What misery to be born again, 
And have the flesh dissolve at death!" 

The hope of immortality, as we are to raise 
the question of its permissibility and reason- 
ableness, is a different feeling from that which 
simply looks upon the continuance of the con- 
scious life of the individual after death with a 
certain pleasurable expectation, or at the worst, 
without positive dread or repugnance. The 
state which we call "immortal" cannot be the 
object of dread. Belief in existence after death 
may be the occasion of much unpleasant antic- 
ipations; but the removal of this belief cannot 
give birth or, in the remotest way, occasion, 
to the hope of which we are going to speak. 
Something quite definite must be added to the 
belief in its universal or so-called natural form, 
in order to make it the object of hope; and with 
this addition it cannot remain the object of 
fear as, according to Spinoza's dictum, the 
corresponding opposite to the hope. Let us 
now consider how, in the moral and religious 

[208] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

evolution of the individual and of the race, the 
required change is brought about. 

As we have already seen, there is little room 
for doubt that the mature Self quite instinc- 
tively, if not with perfection of logical thinking, 
clings to the belief that death does not at once 
and forever end its existence. Indeed it might 
almost be said that this belief arises in the mind 
of the savage or primitive man from a psycho- 
logical inability rather than from a logical proc- 
ess or a rational necessity. As Von den Steinen 
says of the native of Brazil: "He knows he 
will not die." The primitive custom of burying 
the dead in the uterine posture, the wide- 
spread belief in one's own double, the custom 
of interring with the dead the equipments 
and conveniencies of a future life, the fear 
of the ghosts of the departed, the supersti- 
tions that universalize the manifestations of 
spiritual presences, and scores of other similar 
performances, all these indications bear wit- 
ness to the prevalence and spontaneity of this 
belief. To return to the more thoroughly 
rationalized conceptions of Buddhism: "life is 
like a horrid corpse around the neck;" or to 

[209] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

the thought as expressed in Marlowe's Dr. 
Faustus: 

"All beasts are happy, 
For when they die, 

Their souls are soon dissolved in elements, 
But mine must live still to be plagued in hell." 

The belief in an existence to be expected after 
death may take any one of several forms. It 
may be expressed in the doctrine of Atman, as 
reference has already been made to that doc- 
trine. It may be carried to the point of an 
attempt at demonstration, as a postulate of the 
Moral Law, in the fashion of the "Critique of 
Practical Reason" by Kant. Or it may take the 
more naive form of the tenets and rites of the 
lower religions. Or, finally, it may spring as a 
rational hope out of the very nature of the more 
ultimate and permanent of the faiths of morality 
and religion. But as soon as the "ethico-re- 
ligious" character to the belief gets itself es- 
tablished, in whatever form, the state of the 
dead becomes closely dependent upon their 
standing before the gods, or before the Alone 
God. The kind of future existence, or even 
future existence at all, is now conditioned on 

[2101 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

the relation of the human person to the divine 
personalities, or to that One Alone Person, 
"whom faith calls God." It follows, then, that 
the character of the faith and the hope of 
immortality held by the enlightened and de- 
vout of any people will in general accord 
with the purity and reasonableness of its moral 
ideals, and the practical attitude of its indi- 
vidual members toward the Object of religious 
worship. 

The facts which support the statement just 
made are quite too numerous and complicated 
to admit of detailed presentation at the present 
time. Indeed, they are coextensive with the 
entire process which has been going on through 
centuries of the development of religious doc- 
trine and practice in matters of so-called "es- 
chatology." "The eschatology of a nation," 
says Charles in his "Critical History of the 
Doctrine of a Future Life," (p. 310), "is always 
the last part of their religion to experience the 
transforming power of new ideas and new facts." 
As influences over the mind of the individual, 
as well as of the whole people, with respect to 
the morally and religiously "colored" hope of 

[211] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

immortality, we have already recited two effi- 
cient factors, temperament, and the love of 
life as dependent upon experience of the value 
of life. 

The Self cannot, indeed, be imagined as in 
reality existing, without existing somewhere; if 
not in any of its hitherto accustomed haunts, 
in some place; or without continuing in some 
time, it may be at a slower or a quicker pace of 
movement, but still in some order and through 
some endurance of an actual succession of states. 
Any title of everlastingness or eternity applied 
to the human soul cannot essentially change 
its conception of time. Eternal existence for 
the soul signifies, as regards time, only the re- 
fusal to set a limit. For the existence of the 
soul after death, there is only one kind of time 
conceivable; and this is not Kantian or Berg- 
sonian time, but only what in a somewhat dif- 
ferent way from the scientific employment of 
the term, may be called just "common time." 
It seems necessary to say thus much, in order 
to save this conception of the continuance of 
the existence of the individual after death, as 
implied in the separability of the soul from the 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

body, against the risk of being lost in the fog 
of an inconceivable mysticism. Such a fate 
would undoubtedly destroy the practical value 
of the hope of immortality for the average man, 
however clearer it might seem to make it to the 
thought, or dearer to the sentiment, of a select 
group of metaphysicians. 

There is one respect, however, in which this 
natural belief must be greatly changed if it is 
to be converted into a faith on which to repose 
the reasonable hope of a desirable immortality. 
This improvement and elevation have been, 
however, amply provided for it in the course 
of its historical evolution. The belief in the 
soul's continued existence after the death of 
the present body becomes of importance to re- 
ligion only when it takes the form of a vehicle 
for carrying forward into an indefinite future 
the faith in the moral values, and the stability 
in development, of the personal life. The 
ways of expressing and emphasizing this 
connection are various indeed. But the con- 
nection itself is highly important, is, indeed, 
absolutely essential to the reasonableness of 
the hope. 

[213] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

Now, while it is true, on the one hand, that 
the natural (?) belief in the existence of the con- 
scious life of the individual after death is not 
sufficient to warrant the hope of immortality, 
in the fulness of meaning which we wish to 
attach to these words; it is obvious, on the 
other hand, that the disproof of this belief 
would be the destruction of the hope. For it 
is the deathless existence of the individual as a 
real person, with self -consciousness, recognitive 
memory, reasoning powers, and the capacities 
and sentiments which appreciate the value of 
sesthetical, moral, and religious ideals, whose 
hope of immortality we aim to secure. The 
problem of the continuance of the species for 
an indefinite time, under the future physical 
conditions of the planet Earth, is not our 
present care. That problem may be turned 
over to the physical and chemical sciences, 
in their application to subjects which have 
hitherto proved too vast, and which probably 
are intrinsically baffling, for their shrewdest 
conjectures. Nor is it our intention simply to 
commend the wish to be remembered by future 
generations for having done well by their in- 

[214] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

terests; the noble but rather vague and sen- 
timental hope which George Eliot expresses in 
her hymn, 

"Oh! may I join the choir invisible," etc. 

Nor, once more, is it the hope of absorption 
into the Infinite, of attaining that dreamy state 
of existence in which all the characteristics of 
personality are, not glorified, but the rather 
extinguished. The hope of immortality, in 
our meaning of the words, cannot repose on a 
belief that the soul lives on, while surviving 
the total and final loss of all those characteris- 
tics, the possession of which give it the claim to 
be called a soul in the "first instance," as the 
phrase is. 

These remarks would seem sufficiently to 
justify a somewhat lively interest in the univer- 
sality of the belief in an existence for the in- 
dividual man after death, in however crude 
manner the belief may express itself, and with 
whatever fantastic details it may please the 
unrestrained imagination to decorate the be- 
lief. This vigorous and thoroughly healthy 
interest of the primitive and savage man in 

[215] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

his own Self seems very significant and in- 
teresting from the point of view which must be 
assumed by one who inquires, "May I too 
indulge, in a reasonable way, the hope of im- 
mortality?" On this point, our sympathy is 
with the common-sense savage rather than 
with the metaphysician of a mystical turn. 

When an attempt is made to estimate the 
causes which chiefly contribute to the univer- 
sality of the belief in the soul's existence after 
death, the more obvious among them belong to 
two classes. Such a belief seems to be de- 
manded by the primitive man, in order to ex- 
plain the phenomena of his dreams, and other 
psychic manifestations that indicate the sepa- 
rability of the soul from the body. He sleeps 
and wakes again to find that he is still in the 
same physical surroundings. Those who have 
watched him during his hours of slumber can 
amply testify that, although he may have 
rolled over once or twice, he has not moved 
from the spot in which he laid himself down. 
But he has in his dreams been far away, in 
battle or in the chase; he has seen his departed 
ancestors or hereditary foes; and he remembers 

[216] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

much which has happened in that "far-away," 
of which his immediate surroundings bear no 
trace. Often, too, when he is in dreamy mood 
but really quite awake, he has seen the ghostly 
forms recognizably the same and yet how 
changed of human beings that have left 
their bodies behind them, either at death or 
when they had at a great distance entered the 
land of dreams. Indeed, to his mind there is 
no lack of spirits embodied, and yet more or less 
readily changing their bodily shapes. In fact, 
to the savage or even to the civilized man, one 
soul does not seem nearly enough to do all the 
business of which the complex nature of man is 
plainly capable, at the same time or on different 
occasions and at different times. 

To quote from a work in which this subject 
has been treated in detail ("Philosophy of Re- 
ligion," Vol. II, Chapters xliv and xlv): "So 
vague and shifty are the notions of the 
soul's reality which are in general held by sav- 
age and primitive peoples, that their beliefs 
make it impossible to determine which one of 
the several souls possessed by any individual is 
going to be preserved. Indeed, it seems equally 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

possible that several of them should continue 
at least for a time in existence after death. The 
savage, in his effort to account for all his experi- 
ences, readily endows himself with the requisite 
number of souls. The natives of West Africa 
are the possessors of no less than four spirits 
each; the Sioux have three souls; some Dakota 
tribes rejoice in the sacred number four; and 
the Navajos, according to Dr. Matthews, think 
of one of their souls as a sort of astral body. 
Other tribes of savages are proud of, or troubled 
with, no fewer than six or seven. Taoism in 
China provides each individual with three souls; 
one remains with the corpse, one with the 
spirit's tablet, and one is carried off to purga- 
tory. And lest the civilized sceptic scoff at 
this, he may be asked to remember, not only 
the threefold designation of the Hebrews, 
of the animal (nephesh), the human (ruach), 
and the divine soul (neshamafi), but also Plato's 
thumos, epithumia, and nous; or the vari- 
ous conscious, sub-conscious or sub-liminal, and 
dual, triple, or quadruple selves of some modern 
psychologists " (p. 488) . As to our own faith, we 
have often enough declared that one soul for one 
[218] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

man is quite enough, if only it is enough of a 
soul. 

It is easy, however, to attribute altogether 
too much influence over the universal belief in 
the existence of the individual after death, to 
the phenomena of dream-life and to similar 
phenomena. For, as one investigator of the 
subject from the historical point of view has 
aptly remarked, although the endowment of 
every living thing with a soul of its own is 
Homeric enough, the Homeric world is not 
troubled with ghosts; and after the body is 
burned, the soul does not any longer have the 
power to show itself even in dreams. Strictly 
speaking, the experience with dreams and cor- 
responding psychic experiences, although they 
may furnish the occasions, could never of them- 
selves account for man's belief in the continu- 
ance of his soul after the death of the body. 
Dogs dream; and if the problem could be laid 
before them, they would probably be less able 
than is the naive, natural man to conceive of 
their own vanishing from conscious existence. 
But dogs can not raise the problem, much less 
believe in their own immortality, because, al- 

[219] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

though they dream, and in their dream-life, 
more fully than in their waking life, resemble 
man, they are not, like man, metaphysical 
beings. The reason why man universally, 
when not sophisticated, so to say, believes in 
the continuance of the soul after death, is that 
he has arrived at the notion of the separability 
of the soul from the body. In his thought, 
soul, or spirit, has come to have a sort of in- 
herent existence. It is conceived of as a being 
which not only can exist apart from the visible 
physical organism, with which it is most ob- 
viously connected in its ordinary operations, 
but is an essentially separable entity; for it 
does other things when, so far as all visible 
indications can determine the case, it is not 
in or with this body. But this is an on- 
tological affair, a metaphysical belief, in- 
stinctively inferred (if we may be pardoned 
such an unusual and not quite fitting com- 
bination of terms), rather than rationalized 
by being thoroughly thought out and defended 
against objections urged from whatever point 
of view. 

This ontological belief, or positive conscious- 

[220] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

ness of being, at least to imagination and 
thought, separable from the body, though all 
characteristics of this imagined being are sub- 
ject to the fundamental limitations of the 
body, is essential to the development of per- 
sonal life. But we must now descend to the 
more fundamental consideration of the primi- 
tive belief, and then rise to the higher flights 
of ambition, expectation, and trust in which 
the ethico-religious hope of immortality con- 
sists. 

The experiences which through many cen- 
turies of human history have induced the unre- 
flective mind to believe in the separability of 
the soul from the integrity of structure and 
functions of the animal body, do not have the 
same standing as of old, in the light of modern 
science. The same thing is true of the argu- 
ment by which the natural and substantial 
indestructibility (a sort of non posse mori) of 
the soul was formerly established in the current 
theology and philosophy. These facts put upon 
the advocate of the reasonableness of a hope, 
at least for some, of immortal life, the task of 
carefully examining by the aid of modern 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

science the objections which are now urged 
against the primitive belief. By denying the 
possibility of maintaining self-consciousness 
and the other requisites for personal existence, 
after the dissolution of the physical organism, 
these objections destroy the hope of immortality 
at its very root. They maintain that the ab- 
solute dependence of the soul on this organism 
has been now proved beyond all doubt. In- 
stead of what is called Soul being "naturally" 
indestructible, the series of phenomena to which 
we give that title is they assert in its 
very nature, inseparably and essentially bound 
to the functions of the brain and other organs 
belonging to the nervous system. When these 
organs suffer dissolution, or the permanent loss 
of their power to perform their functions, the 
series of phenomena which, if it cannot properly 
be called one of these functions, is, at any rate, 
inseparably connected with them, of necessity 
comes to an end. To hope, therefore, for its 
continuance, or its resumption in connection 
with some other form or style of body, is to 
hope for the essentially impossible. In so 
trenchant and complete fashion does the claim 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

of modern science dispose of even the hope, 
based on whatever moral and religious grounds, 
of an immortal life. 

The objections to which reference has just 
been made are all of one order. They are all 
physiological or psycho-physical. They are 
based, however, on a collection of detailed facts 
determined within certain limits by a vast 
amount of careful observations and experimen- 
tation, such as was scarcely dreamed of by the 
Kantian criticism of the metaphysical proof of 
immortality, not to say the ancient scoffers 
and Sadducees. To examine them thoroughly 
would carry us through many volumes; even 
to summarize them would be difficult within 
the limits of a single volume. The results of 
more than forty years' study of the subject 
enables the author to say that, in his judgment, 
the case as it stands at present is a "drawn 
battle," with the accumulating evidence from 
the purely scientific points of view turning 
against rather than in favor of the objections. 
The empirical results may be summarized in 
somewhat the following way. There is, on the 
whole, a notable tendency of the evidence toward 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

the view that, while the soul, regarded as a self- 
conscious and rational being, and so capable of 
developing in accordance with sesthetical, moral, 
and religious ideals, is, as known to us through 
its sensuous manifestations, dependency con- 
nected with the bodily organism; still this con- 
nection is not absolute and necessarily final: 
it may be and, indeed, there are certain good 
grounds for believing that it is capable of 
developing powers by which it shall outgrow 
this condition of dependence. Or, to state the 
conclusion in a more succinct and yet figurative 
way: The body is the temporary vehicle of the 
soul in the earlier stages of its journey, rather 
than its only and perishable but inescapable 
prison-house or home. The relation is instru- 
mental and functional, but not "substantial" 
in any one of the several justifiable meanings 
of this much-abused word. 

A brief statement of the principal classes of 
facts which look, now this way and now that, 
will serve a convenient purpose at the present 
point in our attempt to make reasonable the 
hope of immortality. And first, we may refer 
to the general conception of life, which the biol- 

[224] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

ogist regards simply as the complex of phe- 
nomena shown by natural organic bodies. 
"The miracle of life," says Haeckel, "is essen- 
tially nothing else but a change in the material 
of the living substance, or metabolism of the 
plasma." From this biological point of view, 
the evolution of life is one vast continuous 
process. And the human animal, although at 
present standing at the head of the process, 
is only one member of the biological series. 
Everywhere in the series, biological death is 
followed by the cessation of all signs of psy- 
chical life. Since man plainly is a member of 
this biological series, and possesses all the chemi- 
cal and physical properties belonging to every 
one of its members; what hope that he can 
differ from all the other members in respect of 
the effects of his biological death? How can 
biological mortality co-exist with spiritual im- 
mortality ? 

But when we turn our attention to the phe- 
nomena and the development of psychical life, 
the impression made upon our minds, if we view 
the phenomena candidly, is of quite a different 
kind. We may affirm without fear of success- 

[W1 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

ful contradiction, that not the simplest of these 
phenomena can be stated, much less accounted 
for, in simple terms of the biological series. 
When stated, however, in terms of psychology, 
(terms which biology is quite too ready to bor- 
row, conceal the real meaning of, and palm them 
off as its own property), the development of 
animal forms becomes a history of the way in 
which obscure feelings of unrest, irritation, 
need, desire, or the more definite appetites of 
food, drink, and sex, the emotions of pride, 
love, hate, and the domestic affections, have 
driven onward toward their goal the more and 
more organically complex of the "protoplas- 
mic molecules." Even in the lower plane of 
general biology and animal psychology, the 
evidence for the potent control of the biological 
series by the psychological is almost, if not 
quite, as convincing as the evidence for the 
reverse relation. 

Rising a step higher in the scale of notable 
scientific objections to the same primitive belief, 
we meet the claim to a strict parallelism be- 
tween the development and all the separate 
performances of the soul and the development 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

and forms of the functioning of the physical 
organism. And here it is worth noticing that 
those who most unequivocally advocate such a 
"parallelism" show that they do not intend to 
deal fairly with their chosen term. For they 
do not understand by this a relation of give-and- 
take on fair measure, as it were, but a relation 
which renders the soul essentially dependent 
upon the organism for its power to do anything 
at all. That a certain parallelism exists be- 
tween the two processes of evolution, both in 
the individual man and in the animal series, 
there can be no manner of doubt. Before it 
leaves the womb of the mother, the human 
animal gives tokens that a low form of plant- 
like or worm-like psychical activity has begun. 
At birth it is already provided with a rich equip- 
ment of association-elements in a brain too 
large to have been needed in its embryonic life. 
It is equipped, that is to say, for a sudden 
transition to an environment where a great 
multitude of new reactions to new sensations 
will be required, in order that it may start and 
continue the specific development for which it 
is by nature destined. But even the fibres in 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

the higher parts of the spinal cord have not yet 
been myelinated; this process must proceed in 
relation to their being used. With the matur- 
ing of the minuter structure of the brain, as de- 
pendent on its use, the higher faculties of 
memory, thought, and volition move at some- 
what the same pace; and with the decaying 
strength or impaired character of these func- 
tions, the mental vigor suffers a somewhat cor- 
responding decline. What is illustrated by the 
details of the parallel evolution, physiological 
and psychical, of the individual man, is also 
impressively enforced by the two forms of 
evolution, in the entire race. It is even yet 
more impressively illustrated by a comparative 
study of all the animal kingdom. 

Now it may at once occur to the discerning 
mind that the very term "parallelism" cannot 
be properly used for a wholly one-sided affair. 
If we mean by it a sort of simply going along 
side by side in the same direction, without any 
actual connection between the two, then when 
we say the word "parallelism" we speak a sus- 
piciously mystical language; but in fact we 
afford no explanation for either one of the two 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

series of occurrences. In very truth, this is not 
precisely what most advocates of the so-called 
theory of parallelism intend to accomplish. 
For it is only by establishing causal relations 
between phenomena, or rather between the 
beings whose the phenomena are, that we ever 
really explain. And the moment we attempt 
this we become aware that there are about as 
many reasons to believe that the mind es- 
pecially in the working of its higher and more 
developed activities of emotion and will in- 
fluences the functions of the bodily organism, 
as that they influence it. Indeed, in the gen- 
eral course of its development the body is all 
the while very profoundly influenced by the 
development of the mind. 

Under the investigations of modern science 
this rough parallelizing of the two series of phe- 
nomena and the two kinds of development 
has become much more definite and, in some of 
its particulars, capable of experimental proof 
in the hands of any one sufficiently trained and 
skilful for the performing of the experiments. 
That emotional disturbances, such as fits of pas- 
sion, or of amorous desire, or of hope or of mel- 

[229] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

ancholy verging upon or terminating in despair, 
and even feelings of the more distinctly moral 
and religious order, are continually being in- 
fluenced by obscure bodily conditions, has been 
known ever since, and even before, men ceased 
to be satisfied by ascribing such abnormal 
states to possession by demons, or to some other 
supernatural agencies. But we now know better 
how much the internally secreting glands, the 
thyroid, the renal, the hypophysis, or the condi- 
tion of the digestive tract, or some irritating 
but obscure sensory impulses from the thoracic 
or the ventral organs, have to do with the pro- 
duction of such psychical phenomena of emotion 
and sentiment. 

Moreover, for a half-century now, and es- 
pecially since 1870, the so-called "localization 
of cerebral functions" that is, the discovery 
of more or less precisely marked-out areas of 
the brain that have something quite special to 
do with the production of certain psychical ac- 
tivities has made no insignificant progress 
both in the number and in the precision of its 
achievements. Of these discoveries, a propor- 
tion have repeatedly been made the basis of 

[230] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

successful surgical operations upon the brain. 
What, however, is exceedingly pertinent for 
our view of the objections which we are subject- 
ing to a test of their value, surgery has at last 
been able to remove considerable portions of 
the cerebral hemispheres without resorting to 
the use of anaesthetics; and even while the 
patient remained perfectly conscious and almost 
entirely free from painful sensations. Thus it 
is proved at least, that the power of self-con- 
scious thought and of entertaining the higher 
sentiments is separable from considerable por- 
tions of the most in general, for those very 
functions important parts of the physical 
organism. 

Now, of course, it is possible to keep on assert- 
ing that all this does not prove that the soul 
can get along in the way of living any sort of a 
life after it has lost beyond recovery all of its 
brain. Of course, also, it is impossible to an- 
swer this assertion by an experimental demon- 
stration to the contrary. If you take a man's 
hoe away, he cannot hoe any better than if he 
deprived himself of the mind to hoe. We talk 
of the organs of the body; and we cannot talk 

[231] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

sense about the use of those organs without 
somehow implying that the soul makes use of 
them as its organs. Smash the organ and the 
organist can no longer use it. Steal away one 
of the organ's pipes, and the most skilful or- 
ganist cannot sound that particular tone on 
that particular organ. We are not, then, turn- 
ing the tables on the objector by unlawfully 
appropriating his own figure of speech. We 
are only showing that the figure of speech fits 
as well and, indeed, a little better the 
belief which is opposed to that of the objection. 
By the admirable work of scores of competent 
investigators considerable areas of the hemi- 
spheres of the human brain have already been 
mapped out with more or less of scientific pre- 
cision. The "motor region," or that part 
lying about the Central Fissure, which has the 
control of the spinal co-ordinating mechanisms, 
in accordance with impulses reaching it from 
various parts of the cortex, is known with no 
inconsiderable detail. Indeed, single groups 
of muscles connected with the movements of 
definite portions of the lower and upper limbs 
have been "located," as the phrase is. In this 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

general region, though on the frontal side of 
the Central Fissure, the so-called "somesthetic 
area," or area for the sense of touch in the gen- 
eral meaning of the term, has been discovered. 
What is still more impressive in the direction of 
making the soul dependent in an absolute way 
upon the integrity of the hemispheres of the 
brain, is the localization of the areas of "psy- 
chic blindness," of "psychic or word-deafness," 
and of the various forms of mental inability 
to interpret visible and audible phenomena, 
without complete blindness or complete deaf- 
ness. (To various phases of this general class 
of disabilities have been given such technical 
terms as Alexia, Asymbolia, Achromatopsia, 
Amusia, Verbal amnesia, Par aphasia, Aster eog- 
nosis, Agraphia, and similar terms, for the first 
meaning of all of which the unlearned reader 
must consult the dictionary; although neither 
the dictionary nor the expert investigator can 
as yet make the significance of the phenomena 
corresponding to the terms altogether plain.) 

That these, and all facts similar to those just 
recited, tend to emphasize a very intimate 
connection between the organism and the 

[233] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

phenomena of mental life, on both the 
side of disposition and feeling and also 
the side of sensation and motion, and 
indeed on all the mental life, since it is all in 
some sort developed upon a basis of primitive 
feelings and sensory -motor reactions, there 
can be no manner of doubt. But there are 
abundant other facts, equally well established, 
which should call a halt to the impulse toward 
any sudden and one-sided conclusions. The 
most obvious of the psychical processes appear 
to exert a powerful influence over the physical 
processes, not even excepting those concerned 
in the growth and the functioning, whether 
well or ill, of the hemispheres of the brain. For 
example, the flow of the gastric juice in the 
stomach seems to be rather a psychically initi- 
ated than a purely physiological affair. The 
nutrition of the tissues, the circulation of the 
blood, the secretion of different kinds of fluids, 
the healthy or diseased nature of the vital 
processes, are dependent upon the states of the 
mind. If abnormal digestion produces melan- 
choly, it is equally true that melancholy pro- 
duces poor digestion. Chagrin and ennui poison 
[234] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

the arterial blood. The sthenic and asthenic 
effect of various emotions upon the organic 
functions is quite as obvious and undoubted 
as is the effect of the functional ^disturbances 
of the organs in producing the emotions them- 
selves. 

The evidence from the most accredited work 
in the localization of cerebral functions is by 
no means one-sided in its conclusiveness. Even 
after the areas of the brain, hitherto chiefly or 
we may say "naturally" employed for 
the performance of a certain function are greatly 
impaired or wholly destroyed, a process of so- 
called "substitution" may, within rather in- 
definite limits, take place. And to bring about 
this process of substitution what we call the 
will of the individual is of all forces about the 
most important force to be requisitioned. In 
the use of the motor areas it is, under ordinary 
circumstances, the psychical factor, the will, 
which has its way. There was sound psychol- 
ogy, as well as keen wit, in the reply of the 
lively French octogenarian to his young com- 
panion, when, on returning from a long walk 
together, the latter complimented him by ex- 

[235] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

claiming: "How well your legs carry you!" 
"You should say," said the older man, "How 
well you carry your legs." All the phenomena 
of suggestion, whether in normal or hypnotic 
or other abnormal states, emphasize the de- 
pendence of the bodily functions on the ideas, 
emotions, and volitions of the mind. The 
bewitched Redskin wraps himself in his blanket, 
turns his face to the wall of his tent, and wills 
to die as he has been told that he will. If "sug- 
gestion" can elicit brands, stigmata, and other 
more deeply seated organic and permanent 
responses, it can also fairly be said to stimulate 
and effect organic repairs' in the highly sensitive 
tissues of the hemispheres of the human brain. 
Indeed, all our soundest psycho-physical the- 
ories of education emphasize the patent fact 
that the brain itself can be disciplined and 
trained by the well-directed and persistent 
action of the voluntary mind, as truly as the 
sensory-motor system can be controlled by the 
brain, considered as a piece of intricate mechan- 
ism. Psycho-physical and physico-psychical are 
complementary terms. 

"When instead of functional temporary dis- 

[2361 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

turbances, with their inevitable accompaniment 
of disturbed conditions of the psychical life, we 
have to consider the mental effects of serious 
organic lesions or other injuries, the evidence 
appears yet more conclusive against the sepa- 
rability of the soul from the bodily organism. 
Especially impressive is this evidence in all 
cases of organic diseases of the brain. If 
wounding, or a tumor, or an abscess, attacks 
and destroys certain cerebral areas, then aphasia 
is the result; and the character of the aphasia 
will depend upon the seat and extent of the dis- 
ease. In one case, the articulate word-image is 
lost; in another, the written word-image; in still 
a third, the unfortunate patient can recognize, 
select, and will the proper sound or visual sign 
for the idea, but he has lost command of the cen- 
ter of voluntary control. As that degeneracy of 
tissues which is the misfortune of old age in- 
vades the cerebral areas, memory of the higher 
and more intelligent sort begins to fail. And 
if that progressive paralysis of the brain-centers 
known as general paresis attacks our friend, 
we stand helpless by, while we see the divine 
and godlike faculties of the spirit fade away, 

[237] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

one by one, and mark the inevitable end, which 
will be the reduction of them all to the lowest 
terms of the merely animal or plant-like exist- 
ence." ("Philosophy of Religion," Vol. II, 
p. 525 f.). 

But even to these extremest cases the "in- 
strumental theory" of the relations of body 
and soul does not by any means wholly fail 
to meet the conditions of a satisfactory applica- 
tion. Not even in the most desperate, incurable, 
and fatal of organic diseases is the complete 
and final dependence of the soul upon the body 
indisputably evinced. On the contrary, even 
in the last stages of that "soul-destroying" 
disease, the progressive paralysis of the insane, 
there are instances where the mental life has 
seemed to reappear and to manifest itself in 
a manner approaching its normal vigor; as 
though it had by one supreme effort broken 
loose from the barriers which had been closing 
round it through the decadence of the brain. 
As to the psychological causes and symptoms of 
insanity in general we know far more than we 
do as to the physiological. 

More important still is it to insist upon the 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

truth that certain activities which are essential 
to the very nature of a soul, such as man is sup- 
posed to possess, or better, really to be (that is, 
essential to the existence and development of a 
personal life), seem to be of a sort which makes 
it a barren and inappropriate figure of speech 
to correlate them in any way whatever with 
corresponding processes in the nervous system. 
These activities of the personal life no more 
resemble the most elaborate and subtle functions 
of the hemispheres of the brain than they do the 
mechanical working of a typewriter or a phono- 
graph. In confirmation of this we quote from 
the fuller treatment in the work, "Philosophy of 
Religion" (Vol. II, p. 532 f.), the following 
passage: "Above the sphere of their investi- 
gators" (i.e., those of psycho-physical science) 
" rises a development of the soul's self-conscious 
and self-determining life, as related to certain 
sesthetical and ethical ideals, to which all 
language derived from a study of psycho- 
physical formulas seems utterly inapplicable. 
Certainly, artistic and moral sentiments and 
ideals, religious beliefs and conceptions, and the 
spirit of filial piety in which the essence of sub- 

[239] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

jective religion consists, are all experiences of 
the same soul whose sensory-motor life is so 
strictly correlated with the functions of the 
bodily mechanism. Certainly, too, these higher 
activities are rarely or never divorced from the 
accompaniment of the lower. For it is as an 
embodied soul, and not as an already dis- 
embodied spirit, that the human being is an 
artist, a devotee, a religious idealist. On the 
other hand, neither a scientific psychology, nor 
a metaphysic of the Self when based upon such 
a psychology, can fail to recognize this so- 
called ' higher nature,' in which to use the 
language of Kant is the root that furnishes 
the indispensable condition, of the only worth 
that men can give themselves. This is the 
power which elevates man above himself, . . . 
a power which connects him with an order of 
things that only the understanding can conceive, 
with a world that commands the whole sensible 
world, ... as well as the sum-total of all ends ! 
This power is nothing but personality, that is, 
freedom and independence of the mechanism of 
nature, ... a faculty of a being which is subject 
to special laws . . . given by its own reason." 
[240] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

The examination of this class of objections 
the only ones that are, at present, urged, on 
defensible and impressive grounds of scientific 
knowledge ends, then, as we have already 
said, at the worst, in a drawn battle. But its 
failure to disprove the primitive belief in the 
separability of the soul of man from its bodily 
organism clears the way for the positive con- 
siderations offered in support of that hope of 
immortality which we desire to show is reason- 
able. For this,'reason they have been examined 
at such length; which is, however, quite in- 
sufficient to afford them even a fair summary. 1 

To secure a reasonable assurance in grounds 
of belief, for the hope of immortality as we de- 
sire to present that hope, it is not necessary to 
examine the demonstrations of the essential 
indestructibility of the soul, in the form in 
which those demonstrations were satisfactory 
to the theology and philosophy of the past. 
The conceptions of the earlier day as to what 
it is "really to be," to be a "substance" in the 

1 Those readers who desire such a summary may consult the 
work on "The Elements of Physiological Psychology" by the 
author and Professor R. W. Woodworth (ed. 1911, Chap. IX, 
X, of Part I, and Chap. I, II, of Part III). 

[241] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

metaphysical sense, no longer satisfy either 
physics, or psychology, or ethics, or the philos- 
ophy of religion. This is as true of those who 
denied, as of those who approved, these concep- 
tions. To exist after death as a soul-substance, 
after the pattern of the soul absorbed in At- 
man, or of the soul that has attained the ex- 
tinction of self -consciousness in Nirvana, is not 
to continue the personal life and its career of 
personal development. The hope of immortal- 
ity, in the meaning which the ideals and prom- 
ises of morality and religion encourage that 
hope, is directed toward something much better 
than this. This hope, like all truly reasonable 
religious hopes, depends upon the acquisition 
of that spirit which triumphs over death because 
it has found the path to a spiritual life and a 
spiritual development, has found, in fact, the 
"Way of Salvation." 

The grounds of such a hope are indicated, 
though not made by any means "sun-clear," or 
completely recognized, by such sayings as 
those, for example, of Marcus Aurelius Antoni- 
nus: "Death is such as generation is, a mys- 
tery of nature." But, "in truth they (i.e. the 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

gods) do exist, and they do care for human 
beings, and they have put all means in man's 
power to enable him not to fall into real evils." 
Still more worthy of reference is the belief of 
that ancient Stoic who, of all others, came near- 
est to taking the Christian point of view respect- 
ing life, and death, and that which is in the 
Beyond. Epictetus placed his hope for all 
these phases of the personal development, in 
the complete submission of his will to the 
Divine Will; and in the heart that, come what 
come might, responded in trust and praise to- 
ward God. "For what else can I do, a lame old 
man, but sing hymns to God? Were I a night- 
ingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; 
were I a swan, the part of a swan; but since I am 
a reasonable creature, it is my duty to praise 
God. This is my business; I do it; nor will I 
ever desert this post, so long as it is permitted 
me; and I call on you to join in the same song." 
If, however, we would recognize the nature 
and grounds of this hope of immortality in its 
most desirable and reasonable form, we must 
view it as presented by the religions of redemp- 
tion; and especially by the Christian religion. 

[243] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

Thus presented it is, in general, the life of a 
spirit that has been set free from the bonds of 
sensuous desire and every form of selfishness, 
and has come to participate in the sinlessness 
and blessedness of the Holy Spirit, through 
communion with it and obedience to its behests. 
In a word, it is a redeemed life. An adum- 
bration of this conception is found in the 
promises of the Orphic mysteries. "Blessed 
is he," says Pindar, "who having seen these 
rites goeth under the earth. He knoweth the 
end of life; he knoweth, too, its god-disposed 
beginning." "Thrice-happy they among mor- 
tals," exclaims Socrates, "who depart into 
Hades after their eyes have seen these rites. 
Yea, for them alone is there life; for all other 
men there is ill." Even the Buddhist concep- 
tion of Nirvana cannot remain true to its ideal 
of a merely negative salvation as the extinction 
of all personal interests, both good and ill. In 
its primitive form it is described in these terms 
of a moral and quasi-divine beatitude: "When 
the fire of lust is extinct, that is Nirvana; when 
the fires of infatuation and hatred are extinct, 
that is Nirvana; when pride ? false belief, and all 
[244] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

other passions and torments are extinct, that 
is Nirvana." And the pathetic account of the 
Death of Buddha represents him, in important 
respects like the picture which Plato draws of 
the death of Socrates, as entering into a con- 
dition of "incomparable security," because it is 
an "incomparable peaceful state." To Megas- 
thenes, when he was in India (about 300 B. c.), 
its "most estimable philosophers, the Brah- 
mans, seemed to hold, about death and the 
hereafter," the same opinions as the Greeks. 
They regarded death as being "for the wise, a 
birth into real life into the happy life." 

The uncertain and low condition of the belief 
in the future existence of the soul, and of the 
hope of immortal life for the individual, among 
the early Hebrews, is one of the most surprising 
facts concerning the religion of the Old Testa- 
ment. But by its trust in a wholly righteous 
and compassionate God, to whom his faithful 
ones might look in full confidence for their re- 
demption, this religion laid the firmest of 
foundations for the hope of immortal life. 
Even down to the time when the conception of 
Yahweh had undergone a considerable ethical 

[245] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

development, and He had been worshipped as 
the Living God, the Giver of Life, the still 
shadowy realm of the dead was not considered 
as greatly concerning Him. Undoubtedly, "the 
eschatology of Judaism was particularly de- 
fective as respects the individual." But the 
moral basis for the hope of immortality must be 
found in the message which sums up the teaching 
of all the later Hebrew prophets: "Say ye to 
the righteous, it shall be well with him." "The 
soul that sinneth, it shall die." 

It was among the ancient Greeks that the 
philosophical conception of the dual being of 
man, and so of the separability of his soul from 
his body, took its earliest ineradicable roots. 
In the Homeric times, to be sure, the continu- 
ance of the soul after death seems to be some- 
how connected with a shadowy corporality. 
This was at least true then, and probably con- 
tinued down to the latest times of a distinctively 
Greek civilization to be true, of the popular 
belief. But in Greek philosophical thought, 
"immortal" and "divine" or "god-like," be- 
came interchangeable conceptions. And Har- 
nack truly says of the current Grseco-Roman 

[246] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

philosophy of religion, in the first two centuries: 
"What was sought above all was to enter 
into an inner union with the deity, to be saved 
by him, and to become a partaker in the pos- 
session and enjoyment of his life." All this 
was, of course, most favorable to the spread of 
the Christian doctrine of immortality for the 
individual. 

But it was Jesus who in his teachings, his 
life, and his death, founded the conception of 
immortal life, and enlisted the faith in it, in a 
form to call forth the most desirable and reason- 
able hope. He continually represents the Old- 
Testament worthies Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob as still alive; /or, their God is not a 
God of the dead but of the living. The true 
sons of God are they who are counted worthy to 
obtain the resurrection from the dead, and 
henceforth become equal to the angels in purity 
and deathlessness. In the larger sweep of 
Christ's teaching and life and death there comes 
into view the promise of salvation as a new and 
higher spiritual life for the individual not only, 
but for the vast multitude of redeemed ones. 
Death puts no obstacles in the way to the tri- 

[247] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

umphant progress of the fulfilment of this 
promise. The life "beyond" is not simply, or 
essentially considered, an everlastingly pro- 
tracted existence for the soul. It is "eternal 
life," or the life of the spirit united with God. 
But in gaining Eternity, the soul of the individ- 
ual person has not lost for this would be a 
psychologically absurd conclusion its ability 
to continue unceasingly in existence, although 
separated, or rather set free, from this perish- 
able body. " Eternal life " is the life in God, the 
true life, the life in the "Father's house," in 
the "everlasting mansions." In the thought 
of Christ, "eternity surrounds us ever in the 
garb of time; and its demands are the same 
yesterday, today, and forever." 

Jesus' doctrine of the life immortal was 
expanded in different ways, and by the em- 
ployment of different figures of speech by the 
Apostles most notably by Paul and John. 
The former exults in the prospect of having 
the sting of sin and death drawn, upon entrance 
into the enjoyment of the promise of immortal- 
ity. The psyche, or natural soul, which has 
had a body appropriated to its uses in its 

[248] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

earthly existence, when "sown in corruption," 
will be replaced by an incorruptible bodily 
manifestation adapted to the exalted uses of 
the freed spirit of the believer. In the writings 
which bear the name of John, the essence of this 
eternal life is a spiritual likeness to Christ; as 
to its precise form, this has not yet been made 
manifest, but will be at Christ's appearing. In 
the "Apocalypse" there is a manifest return 
to much the same confusion of imagery and 
lurid pictorial representation which characterize 
the later Jewish writers. But the original 
Christian type of the life of hope is not essen- 
tially changed; it is the life of a spirit redeemed 
by a union, in faith and love, with an ever- 
living God. 

It is not to be reckoned a misfortune or a 
reproach to Christian theology, and to [the re- 
flective thinking which is made to support the 
Christian hope of immortality, that it com- 
bines with the teachings of its Sacred Scriptures 
the conceptions and arguments of Greek phi- 
losophy. As to the relation between these two, 
it is in place to quote once more from the 
"Philosophy of Religion" (Vol. II, p. 593). 

[249] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

"Indeed, the Platonic philosophy of the soul's 
nature and destiny may not improperly be said 
to have been, in some of its most important 
factors, the doctrine prevalent in Christian 
theology almost down to the present time. 
Plato's firmly rooted belief in the soul's im- 
mortality depends upon the ontological and 
necessary priority of reason to matter; it is 
also essential in order to make reasonable a 
moral view of the world-order and of its future 
history. For the whole of man's life is a process 
of education; but the process is only begun 
in this life and is to be carried on into a future 
existence. For the individual soul there are in 
his doctrine, as in the doctrine of the Catholic 
Church, three possibilities: those who have 
been purified by virtue and knowledge will find 
eternal blessedness; some will pass at death 
into a state of purgatory; others will be finally 
condemned without hope of future redemption. 
In other respects, indeed, Plato's doctrine of 
the future for the individual soul differed from 
that evolved by the Christian Church. But it 
can scarcely be questioned that the most power- 
ful outside influence in developing the Chris- 
[250] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

tian doctrine of immortality was that which 
came from Greek, especially from the Platonic 
philosophy." 

May I hope for immortal life? is certainly a 
question which every individual man, being a 
person, is entitled and even obligated to raise 
for himself. This question, although it depends 
for its answer on the removal of the obstacles to 
accepting the general belief of humanity in the 
separability of the soul from the body, and in 
its continued existence after death, demands 
for its satisfactory answer something more than 
this. It demands an extension of faith into 
the region of the moral and religious ideals, as 
these ideals have been presented in their most 
desirable and reasonable form. Let us, then, 
briefly consider the reasons for such a faith as 
will serve as a ground on which to repose the 
hope of immortality. 

The fundamental personal questions which 
we now put before every individual are these: 
In what kind of a Universe do you believe you 
are living? In what kind of a God, if any, do 
you place your faith? What is your practical 
attitude toward this Universe? What is the 

[251] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

personal ideal, if any, which you are striving to 
attain as a true son of God? To one who in- 
terprets the world as a vast piece of mechanism, 
in which the individual man is entangled, and 
from whose blind workings he cannot possibly 
escape, the hope of immortality cannot be 
recommended as a reasonable or even permis- 
sible hope. For the only reasonable grounds 
for such a hope are the faith in an ever-living 
God, who is himself omnipotent, eternal, and 
omnipresent, perfect Ethical Spirit; and who 
invites the individual man to become his son, 
in faith and hope. Or, to say the same truth 
in a somewhat different way: Ultimately con- 
sidered, the belief in continued existence after 
death, as possible for the individual, depends 
upon the faith in a Universe that is itself 
grounded in Moral Reason. The hope of im- 
mortal life for any particular individual depends 
upon his faith in God as the Redeemer of man. 
The full assurance of this hope belongs to the 
individual who has the experience of a conscious 
and voluntary union with God; to the human 
finite personality, that is in the practical rela- 
tions of mind, heart and will, which constitute 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

the individual man a true son of the Divine 
Person, as his Father. 

All our study of the essential nature of the 
complex emotion of hope has shown its depend- 
ence upon the validity of the beliefs and faiths 
in which any particular hope has its ground. 
False beliefs foster false hopes. Reasonable 
beliefs may be made the basis for reasonable 
hopes. But the loftiest and worthiest of all 
the forms of this universal human emotion are 
devoted to the ideals of morality and religion. 
It is for these hopes that we may urge the rea- 
sons that support the faiths which support them. 
And this we have been doing all the way along 
the approaches to our summary answer to the 
practical question: "What may I (reasonably) 
hope?" Granting these faiths, the experience 
of millions of souls who refuse to mourn for 
their dead, "because," as Plutarch wrote to 
his wife on the death of their young daughter, 
"they have gone to dwell in a better land, and 
to share a diviner lot," is made to appear a 
reasonable experience. More forceful still is 
the confidence with which millions of other 
souls, dying "in the Lord" of Life, continually 

[253] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

face death, thus reposing upon a faithful 
God their hope of a desirable immortality. 
And in this way the testing of experience is 
added to the abstract reasonings on which the 
hope that triumphs over death is ever trying 
more securely to defend itself. 

In a larger way, the faith on which the hope 
of immortality reposes, strengthens itself by 
the contribution which it makes to "theodicy," 
that is, to the defence of God himself as rul- 
ing with the perfection of Moral Reason. No 
other trial to this faith at all equals that which 
is afforded by the inescapable facts of the 
present life. A large proportion perhaps, 
the greater part of these facts makes it diffi- 
cult to believe that Moral Reason is in actual 
control of human history, or of the destiny 
of the individual; and that, therefore, moral 
ideals will triumph at the last. This is not 
chiefly because "he maketh his sun to rise on 
the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the 
just and the unjust"; or even because there 
were innocent persons among "those eighteen 
upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and killed 
them." The seemingly ruthless disregard of 

[254] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

the waste of human life, and the destruction of 
human happiness, by the forces of nature, are, 
indeed, yet more depressing to this faith. But 
most of all do the profoundest and most serious 
convictions of the moral order suffer shock at 
the spectacle of a world of men, in which un- 
righteousness so generally succeeds in its aims, 
and righteousness so often fails of its fitting 
reward. Present this spectacle as skilfuly as 
we may, so long as its staging is limited to the 
scenes and the periods of the earthly life, the 
King of Righteousness does not appear to estab- 
lish his claim to a satisfactory rule; and with 
this claim, his right to be worshipped as perfect 
Ethical Spirit. 

Now it can scarcely be denied that the exten- 
sion of the problem set by the ways of God 
with man into the world of the Spirit and of 
eternity, both the individual and the race in 
its historic development, helps greatly toward 
faith's solution of this problem. From this 
point of view, the Divine Rule in righteousness 
is not an already finished affair; nor is it one 
limited to the things of time and sense alone. 
From this point of view, the heavenly world 

[255] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

is no longer regarded as something demanding 
immediate forcible construction. It is a vast 
moral process, an evolution of a Kingdom of 
Redemption. It must be worked out for the 
individual and for society, though beginning in 
the time "now," as continuing into an indefinite 
future time; though submissive to present 
conditions, yet as carried to its triumphant 
issue under conditions of a much more favorable 
sort. Thus Divine justice and clemency are 
both "given a chance," as the phrase is; 
the moral character of Providence is made more 
secure to the grasp of faith. And, in truth of 
fact, it is the hope of immortality which sustains 
in most minds their confidence in the perfection 
of Moral Reason as ruler of the affairs of men. 

There was, then, sound sense in the crushing 
retort which Napoleon is said to have adminis- 
tered to M. Mathieu:^"What is your Theo- 
philanthropy? Oh, don't talk to me of a re- 
ligion which only lasts me for this life, without 
telling me whence I come or whither I go." On 
the other hand, Goethe's sarcasm expresses 
sentiments which are the exact opposite of the 
facts of life. "This occupation with the ideas 

[256] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

of immortality," said he, "is for people of rank, 
and especially ladies, who have nothing to do. 
But an able man, who has something regular 
to do here, and must toil and struggle and pro- 
duce day by day, leaves the future world to 
itself, and is active and useful in this." The 
facts of life refute the unseemly sarcasm. For 
it is, in fact, just those who "must toil and 
struggle and produce day by day," who most 
feel the compulsion to support their faith in the 
justice and goodness of God, and in the suprem- 
acy and omnipresence of Moral Reason, by the 
hope of immortal life. To them it seems as 
though to ring the curtain down, under the 
conditions which dominate the present world 
of time and sense, would .'convert the whole of 
human history into a sad tragedy; or what 
would be worse yet to every refined mind a 
ghastly comedy. Therefore, with them, the 
hope of immortality is a theodicy. 

If now we turn around and direct our view 
again to the susceptibilities and capacities of 
man, as a subject of the divine rule, we receive 
additional reasons for that faith on which the 
hope of immortality may confidently repose. 

[257] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

This aspect of the question has, however, been 
dwelt upon at sufficient length in the last chap- 
ter. We then found our way to grounds upon 
which the hope of Moral Completeness, or 
to use the specific phrase of religion the hope 
of salvation, might rest somewhat secure. But 
we also found that this hope is of a process which 
must be extended beyond the limits set to it 
by the dissolution of the bodily organism. For 
the development of the personal life, in its 
zeal to become more and more like the perfect 
pattern, the death of the body is no appropriate 
termination. We are not, in saying this, 
unwarrantably exploiting the right of man's 
wish not to die to find its gratification in fact, 
and in every particular. It has been most 
emphatically stated, on the contrary, that the 
majority of human wishes form no reasonable 
ground for human hopes. And besides, per- 
haps half the human race decidedly do not wish 
to extend, beyond death, an existence they 
have found so miserable and unsatisfying during 
its brief continuance here. It requires, then, 
something more than mere wishing not to die 
to justify in any measure the hope of immortal 
[2581 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

life. But this hope, like the hope of moral 
completeness, and as almost, if not altogether, 
the same as the hope of salvation, carries in its 
character and its influence quite different rea- 
sons for its justification. It is essentially unlike 
the hopes awakened by any form of wishing for 
success or happiness as dependent on any kind 
of material good. 

We may then say of the hope of immortality 
in its most assured form something like this: 
The capacity for becoming a son of God makes 
reasonable the hope that, by entering and con- 
tinuing in the way of salvation, one will become 
a more and more perfect son. The capacity 
is a divine promise; the susceptibility is a 
divine gift. Such capacity and susceptibility 
are the endowment of personality. This view 
helps us to understand the mental and moral 
state of those who have attained to the fullest 
assurance of this hope. They are the souls who 
are conscious, in the most vital if also in the 
most sober way, of being united to God by the 
spirit of sonship. They hope for life immortal 
because to use without cant, the very ap- 
propriate phrase which they themselves employ 

[2591 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

- their life is already "in God." For the life, 
about the reasonableness of which our inquiry 
is now pressed, is to continue "rooted in a vol- 
untary, moral union with the Divine Life"; 
or else it must perish, lacking life in itself; it 
cannot attain immortality apart from life in 
God. 

In a word: The essentials of the belief in 
immortality for the individual can be main- 
tained only in the form of a confidence that 
God, in whom every individual of the human 
race lives and moves and has his being, will con- 
tinue to preserve and to develop the life of all 
those whose preservation and progress accord 
with his most holy and beneficent World-plan. 
But the rising faith of religion is that this World- 
plan will somehow show itself in the future as 
the redemption of the race. 

Whatever, of a more definite and concrete 
character, any one may think necessary for him 
in order to answer the practical question, What 
may I hope with regard to this matter of the 
immortal life? it is not a part of our purpose 
to attempt to provide. We shall be quite satis- 
fied if we have, in the limited and modest way 

[260] 



HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

which is becoming to our entire essay, pointed 
out some ground on which this hope may 
establish itself as, not only a permissible, but 
a highly reasonable hope. In respect of hopes, 
as well as of beliefs and knowledges, the element 
of individuality must have fair play. The 
picture of a heaven, which is very attractive 
to some, is decidedly repulsive to other equally 
pious souls. Lofty flights of imagination may 
be indulged in at times; but soberness is in 
general better; and extravagances and vagaries 
of sensuous fancy should be avoided by those 
who are seeking, in reason, for grounds of hope. 
But he who enters and faithfully pursues the 
Way may expect to reach toward the End; he 
who begins the life which is a union of heart 
and will with the Divine Life may reasonably 
and, in the highest form of success may 
assuredly, hope to attain the life immortal. 



261 




CHAPTER VIII 
THE HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

MONG the greater human hopes which 
have undergone a historical develop- 
ment, there is one that, although it 
is, essentially considered, vague and distant, 
is of all others most exalted and most com- 
prehensive. Stated in general terms, it may be 
called the hope of a socially regenerated com- 
munity. In the more nearly ideal form, it 
attaches itself to the conception of a society, or 
state, or even a condition of the entire human 
race, which shall, through the perfection of 
its prevailing justice and good-will, secure 
the highest degree of social prosperity and 
happiness. 

The least profound analysis of this hope 
shows it to be a somewhat heterogeneous mix- 
ture of physical and moral elements. In such a 
society, extreme poverty, unnecessary disease, 
and the economic miseries due to social injustice, 
will be much diminished, or wholly done away. 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

No one, it is imagined, will go unfed or unclothed 
at least, so long as the supply of food and 
clothing avails for all; for no one will have 
either the disposition or the power to deprive 
another of his share of the common good. 
When, however, it is recognized, as even the 
most ignorant and primitive intellects are quite 
able to do, that the physical well-being of 
any society depends in large measure on the 
conduct of its individual members, the social 
ideal at once assumes somewhat of a moral 
character. The ideally prosperous social con- 
dition is seen to demand some nearer approach 
to the perfect control of moral ideals over 
the conduct of those who compose the society. 
Modern conditions and discoveries have 
contributed vastly and rapidly toward the 
enlargement of the social hope. These condi- 
tions have not only made perfectly obvious 
the ethnological unity of the human species, 
but they have also revealed the opportunities 
and obligations which bind together with ever 
tightening bands, the different subordinate 
divisions of the one species. What man is, 
and what the different races of men are, is fast 

[263] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

becoming known as never before. In spite of 
many puzzling minor differences, in their essen- 
tial characteristics and in their fundamental 
capacities all human beings are found to be 
alike. The hope of a greatly improved, if not 
of a perfect social condition, therefore embraces 
them all; or at least, all who can survive the 
physical and ethical discipline necessary to im- 
provement. Within each of these separate social 
organizations, whether regarded from the politi- 
cal or the economic point of view, the demand 
for a comprehensive recognition of the interests 
of all by each is even more clamorous and 
insistent. Society must be largely reorganized; 
no less than this is the requisition of the hour. 
And its form of reorganization must be such as 
more nearly to secure the individual prosperity 
and happiness of all of its members. 

When taken in this large way, the question 
which we are about to consider becomes in- 
timately connected with the problem of the 
future of the entire human race. What may 
we hope about this future? Is humanity des- 
tined more and more to approach the ideal of 
a wholly prosperous and happy society; because, 

F2641 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

as we are obliged to say, a society composed of 
individuals more intelligent and more right- 
eously disposed toward one another in all their 
economic and social relations? 

With all the recent progress of the positive 
sciences, when guided by the increased caution 
and reserve of speculative philosophy, we are 
not at present able to propose any absolutely 
certain, or even highly probable, solution for 
the problem of the final destiny of the human 
race. Nor does there appear much prospect 
that either science or philosophy will in the near 
future be able to pronounce authoritatively 
upon this problem. The astronomical and 
physico-chemical sciences are, indeed, just now 
indulging themselves more boldly than ever be- 
fore in the role of prediction as to the ultimate 
fate of this earthly habitation for man. Their 
prophecies are not altogether encouraging to 
the literal interpretation of the apocalyptic 
vision of "a new heaven and a new earth." 
On the contrary, their most confident expecta- 
tions are perhaps the most pessimistic. For 
they paint the picture of a planet, now grown 
old and without power of self -renewal, in which, 

[265] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

instead of the physical conditions of happy 
human living being greatly improved, these 
conditions have become such as to make any 
kind of human living quite impossible. It 
thus is made necessary for those who would 
still indulge the most extravagant hopes for 
the social future of man under earthly conditions, 
to remind science that it knows little or nothing, 
"for certain," about what will be the fate of 
the physical Universe after the lapse of aeons 
of astronomical time. 

The conclusions of biology and anthropology, 
too, when these sciences assume to extend the 
r61e of prophecy to the end of the existence 
of the human race, while they come nearer our 
daily experiences, and so seem to have a much 
larger collection of facts in their support, can- 
not be claimed to be trustworthy foundations for 
either fears or hopes as to the ultimate destiny 
of mankind. Indeed, the prophets themselves 
do not agree in the most essential particulars. 
For some foresee that the multiplication of the 
species will go on, with increasing rapidity, 
until the end comes in an arrest of develop- 
ment, followed by universal decay and death. 

[266] 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

Others encourage our hopes of arriving, at the 
worst, at a kind of equilibrium, in which a large, 
but strictly limited number of the race shall 
enjoy a fair measure of the good things of life, 
by maintaining a tolerably just and equitable 
distribution of these good things. And there 
are some who deem themselves fortunate in 
having established on grounds of science the 
continual advance of humanity, to the extremest 
limits of the habitable earth and in an endless 
time, all the while realizing more perfectly their 
economic and social ideals. Among these three 
conclusions, the unexpert seeker for a place on 
which to plant his crop of hopes, must at pres- 
ent be left to choose according to his tem- 
perament, or temporary conditions of success or 
failure. 

Most uncertain and unreasonable, though 
most seductive, are those socialistic hopes, 
espoused by certain classes in the social whole, 
who are convinced that by advancing their own 
special interests through legislation or methods 
of violence, without morally elevating and 
purifying themselves and all others, they can 
secure a more righteous and happy state of 

[267] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

society. But we have already exposed suffi- 
ciently the elusiveness of their hopes. 

It would seem, then, that the problem of the 
ultimate destiny of humanity is not for the 
present solvable in terms of scientific knowledge, 
or of descriptive history; or even perhaps we 
may add in terms of scientific belief. Yet 
the dream of a social condition, approximating 
more closely, if not completely realizing, man's 
choicest sesthetical and moral ideals, has arisen 
and developed to fairer proportions, not only 
in the minds of the best thinkers, but in the 
imagination of the millions of mankind. The 
"setting" of this dream, which can be proposed 
with any title to confidence, by the physical, 
biological, and economic sciences, is hazy and 
doubtful enough. We neither know whether 
the realization of the dream is absolutely de- 
pendent upon the everlasting continuance of 
the present "cosmic system"; nor whether 
this cosmic system may, or may not, maintain it- 
self essentially unaltered through countless aeons 
of time. When we seem to have reached some 
economic impasse, such as that threatened by 
the so-called law of Malthus, we are next invited 

[268] 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

to think of a way of escape through the dis- 
covery of modifying or compensating facts 
or laws. 

In what we have said thus far we have not 
meant to deny that certain grounds for the hope 
of a vastly improved social condition of human- 
ity, stretching far into the future, are to be 
found in both science and philosophy, and also 
in human history. These are, indeed, not clear 
or sure enough to form a basis for scientific 
prediction. But they may, not improperly, 
be considered as affording grounds for a reason- 
able hope. Although sociology, in any one of 
its numerous forms, is far enough from having 
arrived at anything like a science capable of 
making predictions, it has, perhaps, dimly dis- 
cerned certain unchanging principles which 
underlie man's social evolution. We are not, 
therefore, disposed to discredit a certain truth 
in the assurance of HebbePs claim: "Social 
life in all its nuances is no mere confluence of 
meaningless accidents; it is the product of the 
experience of whole millions, and our task is to 
apprehend the correctness of these experiences." 

When, however, we "apprehend the correct- 

[269] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

ness of these experiences," the most impressive 
of them all is this: The hope of a greatly im- 
proved and more blessed future for the race is 
dependently connected with the hopes of mo- 
rality and religion. The realization of all these 
forms of emotion, whether we identify them or 
insist upon keeping them apart, is based upon 
faiths that have a moral and religious character 
and significance. This is true even of those 
hopes which try most exclusively to limit them- 
selves to purely economic and social considera- 
tions. And when we consider the pictures 
which speculative philosophy, whether remain- 
ing chiefly a matter of abstract thinking, or try- 
ing to place itself on solid grounds of physical 
and historical facts, has presented of this ideal 
society, we find the moral and religious features 
made distinctly prominent. This is about as 
true of Plato's "Republic" as it is of Augus- 
tine's "City of God." The call to realize the 
supreme ideals of social welfare, both in the near 
and in the distant future, is as distinct in Kant's 
"Critique of the Practical Reason" as it is in 
the writings of the Old-Testament prophets. 
As Rhys Davids has well said: "The sense of 
[270] 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

duty to the race is largely the result of the 
continuity of human progress." 

Above all other similar ideals, does the con- 
ception of an ideal Social Democracy in its 
modern form build itself upon factors derived 
from the moral principles and religious con- 
ceptions of Christianity. It is only as re- 
ligion breaks itself free from that conception 
of a tribal God which unites men in a limited 
way under the feeling, "Thy god is my god," 
and " Thy people is my people," that any ideal 
like that of a Social Democracy can be formed 
and maintained. But the universality of the 
Christian religion, with its peremptory sum- 
mons to be, and to behave, as under one com- 
prehensive bond of brotherhood, as children of 
one Heavenly Father, is the equivalent to the 
call for the founding and development of such 
an ideal. 

Let us now direct attention to the form which, 
in the evolution of the faiths of morality and 
religion, has been given to the conception of a 
reformed social order, or still better expressed 
a redeemed society. When the hopes 
founded in both these faiths attain their highest 

[271] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

stage of development, they combine to present 
to human thought and imagination the fair 
picture of a perfected Divine Kingdom. 

The very conception of morality is, of course, 
indissolubly connected with social organiza- 
tion and social relations. The idea of a moral 
being utterly alone, existing and developing 
out of all relations whatever to other personal 
life, is essentially absurd. Moral obligation is 
obligation of one moral being to another. Duty 
is a word that involves the meaning of some 
act or species of conduct which persons, living 
together under social relations, owe to one 
another. Virtues are specific forms of the 
personal life in social relations. But espe- 
cially is it true of the ideals of morality, what- 
ever form of pictorial representation they may 
assume as due to the different degrees in accu- 
racy of thinking and the ranges and reasonable- 
ness of the flights of imagination, that they 
all have of necessity to do with the welfare and 
happy lot of individuals when constituted into 
a social unity. When then we raise this ideal 
to its nth power, so to say, we do not diminish, 
but the rather emphasize, its essentially social 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

character. The ideal society, from the moral 
point of view, cannot, indeed, be otherwise com- 
posed than of individuals who are, each one in 
his own individual way, striving for the attain- 
ment of his own moral ideal. For, as we have 
been at considerable pains to show in our dis- 
cussion of the question, "What Ought I to Do? " 
the moral ideal of each individual not only 
must, but also ought to partake of the charac- 
teristics of that one individual. Such a high 
and precious differentiation of the best speci- 
mens belongs to the superior excellence of per- 
sonal life over every other form of life most 
closely resembling it. 

Something much more, however, and some- 
thing exceedingly difficult to secure, is necessary 
to the social ideal in its highest form, than 
would be supplied, if every individual selected to 
compose such 'a society were doing his best to 
"live up to" his own particular ideal. Many an 
honest group of individuals has made the experi- 
ment of forming for themselves, with more or 
less distinct plans for excluding the rest of man- 
kind, an ideal social organization. But such 
plans have quite invariably ended in failure. 

[273] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

Communities and communes, with dreams of 
economic, domestic, political, and other con- 
ditions of social perfection, have never yet 
come true in any age or quarter of the earth's 
history. Sectarian and national churches have 
failed as notoriously, and in the same way. And 
all the discoveries of modern history, all the 
improvements in legislation, and all the kindly 
offices of a skilled beneficence, have hitherto 
proved insufficient for the task of framing and 
conducting, within however narrow limits, an 
ideal society. These failures have undoubtedly 
been largely due to the lack of moral complete- 
ness in the members who have undertaken to 
compose and conduct them. But by no means 
wholly so. For although wisdom is one of the 
virtues most essential to the perfection of the 
moral life of the individual, perfect wisdom, 
since it is dependent on perfection of knowledge, 
is not a "thing to be grasped after" by any 
individual. Moreover, there are very hard and 
unyielding physical conditions which perpetu- 
ally accompany and relentlessly control all the 
attempts of man to realize his ideal of a quite 
prosperous and blessed social condition. Such 
[274] 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

a condition would require freedom for all from 
the curse (?) of poverty and the misfortune (?) 
of physical weakness, prevalent disease, and 
too large a percentage of early deaths. While, 
then, increase in morality among all the indi- 
viduals forming any social whole has plainly 
much to do toward diminishing these evils, it 
seems not at all probable but just the con- 
trary that the goodness or the knowledge 
of the individual members of any social organi- 
zation will ever succeed in quite banishing 
them. 

What is still more important to notice with 
regard to the chances for success in the attempts 
to attain the social ideal by the improvement 
of the morality of its members, is this: As 
long as any considerable portion of the race 
lags behind in any of the attempts made at 
realizing the social ideal by any other portion 
of the race, the laggards must retard, or pull 
back to their own level, the more advanced part 
of the entire army. For more and more is it 
becoming apparent that, if mankind is going to 
realize to any worthy extent the social ideal, 
it must be done not only with the consent 

[275] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

but with the co-operation of all mankind. If 
the races, who think themselves superior, at- 
tempt to advance in the rewards of a higher and 
more successful social organization, at the ex- 
pense of, or to the exclusion of, the races deemed 
lower, they are themselves doomed from the 
beginning to the punishment of Cain. The 
ideals of morality are the sure avengers of all 
selfish and exclusive attempts to realize the 
social Ideal. This Ideal must include all man- 
kind. The rewards of unrighteous treatment 
of the weaker by the stronger react with awful 
severity, whether or not they are seemingly 
successful, against the perpetrators of these 
wrongs. As the solidarity of the race becomes 
practically more manifest and more effective, 
the inevitable conditions which limit all ap- 
proach to an ideal social order, as seen from 
morality's point of view, become more manifest. 
To conquer by craft and by violence is a greater 
curse than to be conquered. No partial or 
"sequestered" ideal of a social good can law- 
fully entertain the hope of realization. 

We cannot say that the principles which 
determine even the partial realization of the 

[276] 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

social ideal have always been consciously recog- 
nized by those who have dreamed most vividly, 
and worked most devotedly for the consumma- 
tion of their hope. This fact makes even 
more astonishing the breadth and persistency, 
mingled with audacity, with which poets and 
philosophers, as well as men of religious faith 
and devotion, have clung to the fair promise, 
somewhere and in some however distant future, 
of a morally perfect, a morally redeemed, so- 
ciety. And as acquaintance has extended with 
the hitherto unknown tribes and peoples, those 
who are entitled to be called "authorities" on 
this subject have not long hesitated to embrace 
them all. For on this subject it is not the 
ethnologists or the diplomats or even the his- 
torians, who are worthiest to be considered 
authorities; it is, the rather, the poets, the 
philosophers, and the seers, the promoters 
of the faith and the hopes of moral idealism. 
This faith accepts and attempts to interpret 
the things of time and sense; but it believes 
that these things, and all the complicated 
processes of their evolution, do not constitute 
a world apart from, but, the rather, a world 

[277] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

subordinated to, the world of moral ideals. 
Expressed in a crude way we may find this truth 
in the Buddhist's "Awakening of Faith," as 
follows: "Suchness" (Plato's Realm of Ideas, 
or in modern scientific terms, the Cosmic Order) 
"and the realm of birth and death, are not two 
hostile empires, but two names of the same 
thing." The whole of human history, then, not 
only as conducted in its present earthly environ- 
ment and under its present earthly conditions, 
is one part in the eternal process of realizing 
the ideal of a morally complete society. For, 
to quote a sentence from Sophocles (already 
more than once quoted) which sums up the faith, 
expressed by the greatest of Greek dramatists 
in artistic form, and by the greatest of the 
Greek philosophers in the form of conclusions 
argued in the name of reason, it is forever true 
of these Ideals, 

"They ne'er shall sink to slumber in oblivion; 
A power of God is there untouched by time." 

But the hope of this social ideal is not ex- 
pressed in artistic or speculative dreams alone. 
Adumbrations of it, and powerful accessories 
to the attempts at its attainment, have already 

[278] 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

been discovered in our brief study of the nature 
and grounds of hopes scientific, political, and 
social, especially in so far as all of them are 
more or less intimately concerned with the 
hopes that spring from the faiths of morality. 
In all these forms the cause which aims pro- 
gressively to secure the ideal of a morally per- 
fect organization of society has its efficient and 
devoted servants. Each one of these encour- 
ages himself and all the others with the message, 
"Say not the Struggle naught Availeth." 

As to their private fortunes the souls who 
cherish this hope need no other consolation 
touching their own future than such as is 
furnished by the hope itself. 

"What tho' the destined goal seem faint and far? 
The patience and the toil are not in vain. 
What thou hast given in love thou shalt regain 
If not on earth on some diviner star. 

Sometimes as through a portal left ajar, 
The soul peers outward with illumined eyes 
To a dim shore it leaps to recognize, 

Where the first fountains of its being are." 

And it is to such souls as these, whose faith in 
the ultimate triumph of the principles of moral- 

[279] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

ity is unshaken by delay and seeming defeat, 
that the realization of the ideals of a reformed 
condition of human society will be owing at 
the last, if such a condition ever comes to pass, 
in a future no matter how remote. 

It is in the faiths of religion that the hope 
of an ideal social condition for all peoples finds 
its highest and most confident expression. In 
religion, however, when the hope has reached 
its supreme development, its object takes the 
form of a redeemed humanity united in a social 
whole which is truly A Divine Kingdom. To 
this conception we, therefore, turn our attention 
as representing the highest flights of human 
thought and imagination in the effort to con- 
struct a picture of the future destiny of man. 

Religion is primarily an affair of the indi- 
vidual person. As a subjective condition, it 
is a certain attitude of the individual mind, 
heart, and will toward an invisible Power, 
conceived of, necessarily, in terms of personal- 
ity. This attitude is that of filial piety, an 
attitude of trust, affection, and the spirit of 
willing obedience. Its development is the prog- 
ress in the life of sonship towards and into its 

[280] 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

more perfect form. But religion is also essen- 
tially a social affair. The sons of the same 
Father gather themselves, at the first spon- 
taneously as it were, under family ties or bonds 
of a community. Thus as Sabatier says (Es- 
quisse d'une Philosophic de la Religion, p. 104) : 
"In the same religion, the most diverse spirits, 
finding themselves affected in the same manner, 
become related to one another and form a real 
family united by bonds more strict and more 
strong than those of blood." As to the prac- 
tical effect of such a union, "The soul which was 
hesitating and feeble in isolation, feels itself 
strengthened, as if it had found the confirma- 
tion of its personal faith in the faith of others." 
From the same point of view, Tiele ("Elements 
of the Science of Religion, Second Series," p. 
158) defines the very idea of a church in these 
words: "Religion is a social phenomenon"; 
and he adds: "All the more or less independent 
organizations which embrace a number of kin- 
dred communities, and in general, in the ab- 
stract, the whole domain of religion so far as 
it manifests itself substantially in society" 
may be properly called "the Church." 

[281] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

As a social affair, or community of individuals, 
impressed in substantially the same manner, 
though never, since they are individuals, hold- 
ing precisely identical beliefs (for this form 
of mental activity, with its accompaniment 
of emotions and practical tendencies, cannot - 
such is its very nature be repeated twice 
altogether alike in two different personal lives), 
or moved in pursuit of precisely the same ideals 
in the form of practical ends; as a social 
affair, we repeat, religion develops institutions. 
As institutional, it has to assume some rela- 
tion to the political and civil, as well as other 
social institutions, under which the individuals 
who compose the Church are compelled to 
live. 

When once organized and thus brought into 
more or less close and mutually modifying 
relations with other forms and institutions of 
the social order, the religious community is 
bound to undergo a course of development. 
In this course, the religious community is in- 
fluenced by all the other most powerful social 
forces that constitute its environment, and in 
its turn, exerts a powerful influence upon all of 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

them. Of this reciprocally modifying social 
interaction, the most important factors are 
those which it is customary to group under the 
abstract terms, Church and State. For the 
most nearly absolute identity of these two 
greater forces of social institutions, we should 
probably have to look to Mohammedanism. 
Even here, however, it is not quite true, as one 
writer on the subject has claimed, that "the 
Mohammedan Church and State are one indis- 
solubly; and until the very essence of Islam 
passes away, that unity cannot be relaxed." 
Such is, indeed, the theory of the Koran, and 
as well of the tradition which has already at- 
tained an authority almost, if not quite, equal 
to that of the Koran. But it is not the theory, 
when theory comes to the test of a practical 
application, of the Doctors of Law; and it is 
becoming less and less the theory which controls 
the practice of the Mohammedan world. The 
present prospect is that the political institutions 
and the religion of Islam will become more and 
more widely divorced, if anything corresponding 
to a Mohammedan State continues to exist. 
And in fact, the faith of Islam has never been 

[283] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

much freer than all the other great religions have 
been from dissenting sects on grounds of re- 
ligious belief, and from warring political units 
seeking control of the so-called State. 

This necessity, which is put upon every re- 
ligious organization, as it is laid upon every 
form of a human institution, of undergoing 
changes that must, on the whole and "in the 
long run," as the saying is, be changes for the 
better, if it is to continue in existence, applies 
to the beliefs, the ceremonials, the ecclesiastical 
government, and all the other institutions of 
the religious community. But it is particu- 
larly true of the greater religions which have 
made claims to an universality that implies a 
larger than usual adaptability. In the cases 
of the inferior religions, with their restricted 
claims, the community which comes under their 
spell is promised the aid of numerous petty 
and often criminal devices to get the tribal 
gods on their side; especially in times when 
their divine help is needed in order to secure 
the people who believe in them against some 
common enemy. 

It follows from what has just been said, and 

[2841 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

from much more that might be said in proof 
of the same conception of the religious com- 
munity, that the hope of the realized social 
Ideal, as a Divine Kingdom, depends chiefly 
upon the future of religion. The belief in, and 
the worship of, tribal gods no matter by 
what name such divinities are called can 
never secure, or even essentially promote, the 
cause of a universal betterment of human so- 
ciety. Neither must the divinity, even when 
selected from a lot of claimants for the right to 
the confidence, the worship, and the service 
of all mankind, in all eras and stages of its evolu- 
tion, be the patron and the protector and the 
moral ideal for any one alone, among the many 
classes, or races, or nations, into which human- 
ity has split itself up. The religion with whose 
future the social hope of the whole of humanity 
is bound, must be a religion of truly "uni- 
versal" character. Only the religions whose 
beliefs secure that kind of optimism which is 
born of faith in God as the universal Father 
and Redeemer, and which as controlling the 
conduct of life embraces all mankind, can avail 
for founding this Divine Kingdom as something 

[285] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

independent, for the essentials of its faith and 
hope, of all the vicissitudes of space and time. 

The effort at social expansiveness takes dif- 
ferent forms in the different greater religions. 
In realizing this effort the religious festival is 
one of the most effective of the means employed. 
To feast and sport, as well as to worship to- 
gether, awakens and enhances the social feeling. 
Of the eleven national holidays celebrated in 
Japan, all but two are connected with ancestor 
worship; the remaining two are of political char- 
acter. "In all Semitic life the Hag, or religious 
festival, has always played an important part." 
In the Babylonian religions, while some of the 
priests and monarchs arrived at exalted notions 
of the Deity, and of his relations to men, neither 
the priests nor the monarchs seem to have been 
considered the heads or representatives of a 
religious society, that is, of the whole people 
as a people of one faith in one God, after the 
pattern of the kings and priests of Israel. In 
the valley of the Euphrates, therefore, the germ 
of a church was not planted; the religions preva- 
lent had none of the characteristics necessary 
for a truly social religious development. The 

[286] 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

king was the son of God; but the people were 
not the people of God, and by this fact bound 
together into a social unity. 

The growth of the religious community repre- 
sented by the Hinduism of India is of a quite 
different order. Any religious belief, either of 
a popular character or such a form of reflection 
as is necessary to found a school of religious 
philosophy, is permissible in Hinduism. As a 
speculative system, or rather as a hotch-potch 
of confused and contending systems, anything 
is permitted to the believer. In respect of its 
speculative freedom, Hinduism is perhaps the 
most nearly universal of all the greater religions. 
But its doctrine and practice of caste prevents 
it from all reasonable claim to a true and effec- 
tive practical universality. The individual 
Hindu is debarred from the social privilege 
and incitement to a life in pursuit of a moral 
ideal as one fortified by the consciousness that 
he is a member of a community of brothers 
accepting allegiance and bound to service, as 
sons, in a divine family. This need of the social 
motive, and this deficiency in respect of failure 
to furnish it, was one of the several facts that 

[287] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

gave success to the earlier reforms of Buddhism. 
Buddhism offered to relieve the people, the 
multitudes "weary and heavy laden," from 
the burdens of caste and priestly domination 
and prescribed ceremonial, and to convert them 
into a brotherhood of redeemed souls seeking 
a common salvation. But the redeemed ones 
had no eternal and omnipresent personal Spirit 
to serve as their King; and the hope of the 
community for welfare of the life here and the 
life in the Beyond could not take the social 
form. Nirvana is not a social condition. 
Buddhism had no one Living God; it could 
not found the faith on which must repose the 
hope of a universal and eternal Kingdom of 
God. 

It was in the thought and work of Jesus that 
the nobler conception of a universal Divine 
Kingdom had its birth. The realization of 
the social ideal by the way of the universalizing 
of the religion held by the members of the 
society was, indeed, a conception of the He- 
brew prophets. In their thought, Israel is God's 
people, the community which He has chosen 
and bound to himself, and bound together by 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

a covenant that is everlasting and can never 
be broken. This social conception of Judaism 
as dependent on the adherence of all the people 
to one form of religion served its purpose so 
long as Judaism retained also its civil and 
political unity. When this gave way, and was 
followed by the chaotic conditions of the Macca- 
bean era, a sort of substitute for it was found in 
a process which has been not inaptly called "the 
churchifying of piety." In this way, some 
choice souls foresaw the possibility of others 
than the Jews becoming members, with them, 
of the same socially organized piety. But the 
views of most, even the most pious and faithful, 
never separated the conception of the Divine 
Kingdom from a closely corresponding form of 
ecclesiastical and political association. 

The Kingdom of God, as Jesus conceived of 
it, was not inseparably bound up with any 
ecclesiastical or political association. As to 
the latter form of association, this Kingdom 
stood in contrast or in opposition to "the 
kingdoms of this world." Not, however, be- 
cause it countenanced rebellion against them; 
but because its spirit was of a quite different 

[289] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

order, and its aims and ideals were essentially 
unlike. Its members were all the redeemed 
ones, the community of souls who, trusting and 
following him, had become the sons of God. 
For, the standard for membership in this King- 
dom was spiritual, a change of mind, self-sur- 
render, and a loving trust in Divine Grace, 
rather than any technical mode of worship 
or legal conformity. 

Only in this indefinite and ideal way can 
Christ be called the founder of the Christian 
Church. But he not only drew men to himself 
while his brief life lasted; he also chose apostles 
and commissioned them to go into the "whole 
world" and proclaim the glad tidings, or Gospel 
of his kingdom. A religious community which 
should take some definite form of social organ- 
ization, was the natural and necessary result 
of the working of man's social nature in its 
reception and application of the religion of 
Jesus. The more precise forms and laws regu- 
lating this community were the natural and 
necessary result of the working of the spirit 
which animated this community, under the civil, 
political, and social environment of the time. 

[290] 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

It is not a part of our purpose to trace the 
various vicissitudes which have shaped the dif- 
ferent forms taken by the social organization 
of Christianity as, today, the chief claimant to 
represent worthily the social religious ideal. 
That it has already attained this ideal, or made 
anywhere any very close approach to its attain- 
ment, no candid student of history or of the pres- 
ent facts of the case, is likely to maintain. But 
the parables of Jesus, and his other expressions 
of insight into the future, teach that the tares 
and the wheat will not be all and finally sepa- 
rated, until the divine process of judgment of 
the two has been quite completed. And neither 
social science nor Christianity as a social or- 
ganization equipped for social service, promises 
to hope any such final solution, under earthly 
conditions, of the vast problem of economic and 
moral evil. 

When, then, we raise the questions, What 
is to be the future of the Christian religion as 
a social organization? and, What is the precise 
state of the social welfare which will be achieved 
by the universalizing of this organization? we 
cannot maintain as reasonable either one of 

[291] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

two extreme, and customarily opposed opinions. 
We are scarcely warranted on grounds of re- 
ligious faith in hoping that the Church, having 
become universal in the extent of its member- 
ship, will accurately and throughout correspond 
to that social ideal which the conception of a 
perfected Kingdom of God aims to present. 
Even less far less can we respond to the 
predictions of writers like, for example, M. 
Guyau in his work on "The Irreligion of the 
Future." "In this age," says he, "of crisis, 
of religious, moral, and social ruin, of reflective 
and destructive analysis, the reasons for suffer- 
ing abound, and they end by seeming to be 
motives for despair. Each new progress of 
intelligence or sensibility would appear to be 
productive of new pains." "In all that remains 
of sensation or thought for us, one sentiment only 
is dominant, that of being weary, very weary." 
To all such complaint our answer is: This 
abounding of motives for despair, this utter 
lack of hope for the future social ideal conditions 
of which the seers of mankind have always 
indulged themselves in dreaming, is not the fault 
of the faiths of morality and religion; it is not 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

due to the recognition of the falsity of the claims 
in which those faiths are founded. Morality 
and religion do not promise anything to endeav- 
ors after social betterment which reject the 
principles, and refuse to trust and serve the 
ideals, of morality and religion. And if econ- 
omists, reformers, diplomats, statesmen, social- 
settlement workers, and socialistic organiza- 
tions, whatever be their creed or cult, persist in 
flouting or neglecting these same principles and 
ideals, they will continue to be subject to over- 
whelming motives for being "weary, very 
weary," and even for despair. Without moral- 
ity and religion, humanity can reasonably 
entertain no hope of securing the social ideal, 
or any considerable approach to this ideal. On 
the part of the Christian Church, too, the 
grounds of its hope remain reasonable only so 
long as they are kept pure. When the social 
ideal of religion drops down to the level at 
which it is ready to avail itself of any of 
the morally degrading and corrupt means for 
extending its domain, for "universalizing" 
organized piety, which so generally charac- 
terize the attempts of the kingdoms of this 

[293] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

world to extend themselves, it forfeits its right 
to hope. 

We conclude, then, that while the conception 
of a Church Universal, if constituted after the 
pattern set by the doctrine and life of Jesus, 
may hope more and more nearly to approximate 
the ideal of a Divine Kingdom on earth, it is 
not the substitute, much less the exact equiva- 
lent, of this ideal. A truly Divine Kingdom is 
founded upon a much grander plan, and in- 
cludes infinitely larger stretches of time and 
space. And here we listen to the "far cry" 
that our minds should be brought back to the 
place from which in their hunt for truth they set 
out. The hope of a Divine Kingdom is the 
only permissible form into which can reasonably 
be set the hope of a Social Ideal. For it is a 
hope based upon faith in God as the ideal 
that is, the omnipresent, all-powerful, and 
ethically perfect Ruler of the Universe, of all 
things and of all spirits, irrespective of limiting 
conditions of sense, and time, and space. If 
there is no such God, there can be no hope for a 
social ideal; its very conception in the vaguest 
form, not to say, its attainment through an 

[294] 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

indefinitely long process in "universal" and not 
merely earthly history, can reasonably raise no 
semblance however ardent the desire of 
the faintest expectation. The antithesis to this 
Divine Rule is the despotism of fate, or the 
chaos of hell! 

It has been the custom for all the religious 
seers of the future social condition of mankind, 
to frame more or less definitely outlined pic- 
tures of a World this world or "the other 
world" that shall form a fitting environment 
for a community of redeemed souls. It has 
seemed to all as though the moral and spiritual 
completeness of personal life demanded some 
radical changes in its physical surroundings. 
But Apocalyptic descriptions of A City with 
golden streets, ablaze with light but devoid of 
the shining of sun or moon, a crystal sea, and 
other similar physical accessories, are not the 
rewards of faith for which the reasonable mind 
has either longing or hope. It does not mini- 
mize the longing or threaten the hope, if the 
physical and chemical sciences demonstrate 
the impossibility of such a material dwelling- 
place for the redeemed soul. The same thing 

[2951 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

is not, at least to the same extent, true of the 
longing and the hope of a life in which there 
shall no longer be sickness nor suffering nor 
sorrow nor tears. And the impossibility of 
securing territory and conditions which will 
exclude these forms of seeming evil is not at 
all so manifest when stated in terms of sanitary 
and therapeutic science. But that there can 
be no complete freedom from suffering and 
sympathetic tears until complete redemption 
has triumphed in all quarters of the Divine 
Rule would seem to be made sure on ethical 
and spiritual grounds. And for the redeemed 
soul, purifying suffering and sympathetic tears 
have lost their bitterness and their repulsiveness. 
The environing conditions of the Divine 
Kingdom, as an object of faith and reasonable 
hope, are just as little distinctly typified by any 
existing monarchy or republic, or by any form 
of political organization spelled in outline by 
the reveries or dreams of socialistic scheming. 
Even the future of religion, as represented by 
the spread of any of the existing churchly organ- 
izations, or by the so-called Universal Church 
Triumphant, does not afford ground for the rea- 
* [ 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

sonable hope of a perfect adjustment of this 
earthly environment to the perfected society 
of a race redeemed by Divine Grace. That 
such an environment is absolutely impossible, 
however, we cannot say in the name of the phys- 
ical and chemical sciences. Indeed, these sci- 
ences have of late been disclosing such amazing 
but hitherto hidden possibilities of transfor- 
mation in "matter" no longer to be regarded 
as "brute" and "dead" that nothing in the 
way of its achievement can safely be called 
forever impossible. Radio-active substances 
now seem able to perform feats which the science 
of two decades ago would have declared quite 
beyond the powers of the angels. 

We must leave, then, this question of the more 
precise imagery fit to encourage the hope of an 
environment suitable to the perfected Divine 
Kingdom, in the region where dreams may be 
indulged betimes, but in general without placing 
much confidence in, or attaching much value to, 
the pictures the imagination presents to men, 
while dreaming. 

"But what more specifically said may 
we reasonably hope for, with reference to the 

[297] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

future of religion? Three things may be said 
with most comfortable and well-founded as- 
surance in answer to this question. And, first, 
the religion of the future will be social, in the 
higher and better meaning of this word. It 
will more and more be a power to transform 
society the ' Great Psychic Uplift ' of the race. 
No form of positive religion which does not 
actually effectuate in a large and generous way 
the social improvement of mankind can reason- 
ably hope to have its future prolonged. Second : 
the religion of the future will be ethical in the 
higher and better meaning of this word. It will 
be more and more an inspiring and illumining 
motive for the control of the conduct of the 
individual in the interests of righteousness, 
trueness, and all the virtues of mind, will, and 
heart. No form of religion which does not in 
fact make men better morally can reasonably 
hope to^have its future prolonged. But, third: 
the religion of the future will be a faith in the 
sense that it will retain a certain characteristic 
view of the world, of human life and human des- 
tiny, and of what has worth of the highest and 
most imperishable kind. This faith within the 
[298] 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

soul of man, as subjective religion, will be the 
spirit of practical piety, or of loving trust to- 
ward the Divine Being, and filial feeling and 
conduct toward all finite spirits as sons of 
the Infinite and ethically Perfect Spirit. And 
the normal relation between this faith and the 
ethical and social functions of religion will be 
retained; since it belongs to the very constitu- 
tion of man that his positive view of life, when 
warmed with emotion, should realize itself in 
his behavior as a member of society." ("Phi- 
losophy of Religion," Vol. II, p. 467.) To be a 
member of this redeemed community is, for the 
individual, the limit of his most reasonable hope. 
Like the other greater hopes of morality and 
religion the hope of moral perfection and 
the hope of immortality the hope of a Divine 
Kingdom has its grounds largely within itself. 
It is a leap from real experience to faith in the 
Reality of the experienced Ideal. For the 
individual, it is the hope of realizing in ever 
fuller measure the thing already experienced 
namely, an actual process of redemption. For 
the race, it is the hope of a future which will 
more and more embrace mankind, in the extent 

[299] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

and thoroughness and perfection of its opera- 
tions, with all human social institutions and 
social relations. And to this community of 
redeemed ones, it rests with God to give it 
such a habitation and physical and other en- 
vironment as he is amply able and sees fit to 
provide. Precisely what and where such an 
environment may be, we cannot safely predict, 
or within the bounds of reasonableness quite 
satisfactorily imagine. But the King of the 
Kingdom has "many mansions," and he pro- 
vides a variety of bodies for his various creations 
which are limited only by his mysterious wisdom 
and all-embracing good- will. 

It must be evident to the most casual reader 
that, for our optimistic view of the hope of a 
Divine Kingdom, so far as any serious attempt 
has been made to argue its reasonableness, the 
argument has proceeded in an order which is 
nearly the reverse of that customary in theo- 
logical circles. We may now state the course 
of thought as it appeals to reason from the point 
of view held by our goal : 

1. The optimism which is the hope of a Di- 
vine Kingdom; 

[300] 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

This hope is dependent on 

2. The belief in the triumph of the moral 
ideals; 

This belief is founded on 

3. The doctrine, or intellectual faith the 
reasoned conviction as to the moral attri- 
butes of God. 

Here, then, we finally rest the answer to the 
question, What may I hope? concerning the 
most important of all human hopes, the hope 
of salvation, the hope of immortality, the hope 
of a Divine Kingdom. The answer to this 
question is in the answer to another question: 
Have I the firm faith in an ever-living, perfectly 
righteous, and all-merciful God? What is my 
last opinion and controlling practical attitude, 
as an answer to this quite comprehensive ques- 
tion? And, then, as coming under it: What 
kind of an Universe is this in which I am ines- 
capably fated to live? 

Indeed, from our present point of view we can 
now see how all the four questions which have 
occupied us in this series of little books, may 
be looked back upon as somehow subordinate 

[301] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

to this one, What may I hope? especially 
with regard to the ultimate goal of humanity. 
For you and I are human; and our fortune here 
and destiny in the Beyond is wrapped inex- 
tricably up in the fate of the Universe; and 
this, if there be a God, surely rests in the divine 
hands, and no violence or craft or wisdom of man 
can wrest it from them. What, then, is the 
fatal objection that should deter him who has 
the right kind and degree of faith in God, from 
arguing thus with himself? My supreme hope 
is that of a Divine Kingdom; my most con- 
trolling and comforting faith is personal trust 
in its King; my most rewarding and obligatory 
duty is His service; my highest and most worthy 
knowledge may be looked upon as growing wise 
in His ways. 

It will be recalled that the one word which 
has given the key to the "substance of our doc- 
trine" as to knowledge, duty, faith, and hope, 
is this, Personality (or the Personal Life). 
It is shallow thoughts and frivolous emotions 
and evil practices gathered about the concepr 
tion entertained in response to this word, that 
mar and spoil all the activities and issues of 

[302] 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

the life of the individual man. Modern science, 
not only biological, but also economic and 
political, and worst of all, psychological, is 
largely guilty for all this. Too much have its 
devotees obscured or neglected the problem: 
What shall it profit a man (a person), if he gain 
the whole world and make a mess, and suffer 
final loss, of his personal life? Too little has 
modern education, whether as undertaken by 
the family, or the school, or the state, realized 
its opportunity and directed its policy, for the 
development of personality in itself, and as 
estimated by its own values, rather than by 
the increase of the material advantages of its 
environment. 

But this life is intrusted to the individual 
man as a thing for development. The Evolu- 
tion of Personal Life is the only way to get 
it; just as by the path of evolution alone can 
any higher form of life be reached. In this 
form of evolution for himself, every individual 
man takes a hand; he himself must fight for its 
prizes and its rewards; and there is absolutely 
no escape from this war. In his behavior and 
in his many efforts to find practical answers 

[303] 



WHAT MAY I HOPE? 

for the questions, What can I know? What 
ought I to do? What should I believe? and, 
What may I hope? a "person" is bound by his 
very nature to be reasonable. This is a word of 
which there has been made constant and varied 
use. But such use has been due to the fact 
that we would not mean by "being reasonable" 
simply being disputatious or skilled in argument, 
or even wise in the scientific proofs for many 
conclusions, or learned as respects the causes of 
many things. By "being reasonable" has been 
meant, the rather, that docile and modest but 
eager attitude toward truth and duty, that 
diligently inquiring mind into the satisfactions 
and rewards of the faiths of morality and re- 
ligion, and that selection and seizure of the 
hopes, which guide, comfort, and encourage in 
the practical life, just because they are founded 
in these faiths, all of which is most safe and 
fitting and practically useful for a rational but 
finite being in his relations to that Supreme 
Reason, in whom he and all his environment 
and his destiny have their Ground. 

And now it remains only for the reader, and 
the author, both to answer each of these impor- 

[304] 



HOPE OF A DIVINE KINGDOM 

tant questions for himself and in his own way. 
For, as was confessed at the very beginning 
of our acquaintance: No one can answer them 
for any other one, but only for his very own Self; 
and the answer must be somewhat different in 
every individual case. We may part, then, 
not in the spirit of reciprocal faultfinding, but 
with the exchange of a cheerful "God-bless- 
you"; and in parting tell the question we 
have been asking and answering, for ourselves, 
all the way through. 

"How shall I give that which hath been given? 

"Hold thy heart in thy hand and let thy 
words keep time to the beat of memory. Thus 
shall the written page be possessed of an 
enduring spirit and a pervading light." 



[305] 



INDEX 



ANTONINUS, MARCUS AURE- 
uus, 242 

ARISTOTLE, his theory of 
knowledge, v f.; and of 
ethics, viii 

"AWAKENING OF FAITH" (quo- 
ted), 278 

BAIN, on nature of hope, 12 f ., 
26 f., 43 

BARING, MAURICE, 120 f. 

BELIEF, PROBLEM OF, treat- 
ment hitherto given, ix f.; 
hope, as dependent on, 31 f., 
59 f., 177 f., 191 f. 

BHAGAVAD G!TA, 52 f . 

BOURGET, M. PAUL, 158 

BRINTON, on religion of "Prim- 
itive Peoples," 190 

CHARLES, doctrine of future 
life, 211 

CHURCH, the, relation to State, 
283 f.; Mohammedan view 
of, 283 f.; not the same as 
Divine Kingdom, 285 f., 
291 f., 293 f.; Hindu con- 
ception of, 287 

DARWIN, on nature of prayer, 

187 f. 
DAVIDS, RHYS, 270 f . 



DEFRENNE, M., 158 f. 

DEMOCRACY, hopes of, 147 f., 
151 f. 

DESIRES, as related to hoping, 
43 f., 44 f.; immorality of 
certain kinds of, 46 f., 49 f., 
52 f. 

DIVINE KINGDOM, the hope of, 
115, 133 f., 143 f., chap. VIII, 
240 f., 248 f., 252 f., 255 f., 
258 f., 263 f.; as social re- 
organization, 241 f., 245 f., 
250 f., 257 f.; as religious 
faith, 255 f., 263 f., 266 f.; 
Jesus' view of, 288 f . ; as 
contrasted with earthly 
kingdoms, 289 f.; Apoca- 
lyptic visions of, 295 f . ; 
environing conditions of, 
296 f. 

EPICTETUS (quoted), 22, 98, 
202, 243 

FAITH, the religious, 174, 178 
f., 186, 191 f., 251, 298 f. 

(See also BELIEF and RELIG- 
ION) 

FEAR, as antithesis of hope, 
12 f., 15 f., 20 f.; Mosso 
on, 14 f . 

FESTIVAL, the religious, 286 f. 

[307] 



INDEX 



GOETHE, on hope, 2, 64; on 
belief in immortality, 256 f. 

GUYAU, M., on religion in the 
future, 292 

HAECKEL, on miracle of life, 
225 

HARNACK, 246 f . 

HEBBEL, on social develop- 
ment, 269 f . 

HOPE, Nature and Sources of, 
chap. I; universality of, 2 f.; 
uniqueness of, 11 f., 19 f.; no 
synonyms for, 22 f . ; com- 
plexity of, 24 f. ; connection 
of, with beliefs, 31, 58 f., 
169, 179 f., 184 f., 191 f.; 
permissive character of, 33 f ., 
71 f., 108 f., 113; the As- 
surance of, chap. Ill, 65 f.; 
educatory nature of, 80 f., 
99 f.; of Optimism, 3|; 
need of a succession of, 105; 
of moral perfection, chap. 
VI, 163, 174 f.. 179 f., 184 f.; 
of immortality, chap. VII, 
242 f. 

HOPING, EMOTION OP, scanty 
scientific treatment of, xi f., 
12 f.; naturalness of, 5 f.; 
influence of temperament 
on, 6 f., 8f.; uniqueness of, 
11 f.; physiology of, 17 f.; 
analysis of the, 23 f., 28 f., 
30; Rights and Limitations 
of, chap. II, 42 f., 46 f., 
52 f., 54 f., 75 f.; difficulty 

[308] 



of assigning rules for, 37 f.; 
dependence of, on the will, 
38 f ., 59 f . ; " rules of reason" 
applied to, 41 f., 59 f., 75 f., 
186 f . ; element of desire in, 
44 f ., 75 f . ; of expectation, 
44 f.; and of trust, 44 f.; 
assurance of, 67 f ., 72 f., 
77 f.; Practical Uses of, 
chap. IV, 94 f., 109 f., Ill, 
113 f., 120 f.; "technique" 
of, 98 f., 104 f.; tact in 
practical uses of, 97 f., 
116 f. 

HOPES, fundamentally differ- 
ent kinds of, 62 f., 137 f.; 
of Moral Idealism, 82 f., 
97 f., 113 f., 138, 171 f., 
175 f . ; illusory character 
of certain hopes, 97 f., 149 f.; 
scientific, chap. V, 126, 
137 f., 139 f., 164 f.; social, 
chap. V, 123, 125, 145 f.; 
of religion, 139 f., 155 f., 
179 f., 186 f., 191 f., 246. 
247 f., 254 f . 

IETASU, his motto, 107 

IMMORTALITY, hope of, 122, 
chap. VII, 203 f., 208, 211 f., 
215, 222 f., 227 f., 257, 260 f.; 
origin of belief hi, 203 f., 
209 f., 21 If., 219 f.; Brah- 
minical doctrine of, 207 f.; 
Buddhistic fear of, 207 f., 
244 f.; objections to, con- 
sidered, 223 f., 226 f., 230 f., 



INDEX 



235 f., 241 !.; arguments for, 
242, 243 f., 246 f., 251 f., 
254 f., 260 f.; Old Testament 
doctrine of, 245 f.; Jesus' 
views concerning, 247 f.; 
Apostolic doctrine of, 248 f.; 
influence of Greek philoso- 
phy, 249 f . ; belief in, as a 
theodicy, 254 f . 

KANT, doctrine of belief in 

immortality, 210 f., 240 
KARMA, doctrine of, 143 f. 
KNOWLEDGE, PROBLEM OF, as 

treated by Aristotle, v; 

and Plato, vi; and in India, 

vif. 

MANTRA, conception of the, 

190 f. 

MARDUK, prayer of, 195 
MAXIMS OF ANI, 195 
MEGASTHENES, 245 

NIRVANA, doctrine of, 242 f., 
244 f. 

OPTIMISM, as related to human 
hopes, 84 f., 86 f., 89 f.; the 
hope of, 92, 300 

ORPHIC MYSTERIES, 169, 244 

OSIRIS, cult of, 195 f. 

PARALLELISM, psycho-physical, 
doctrine of, 226, 229, 231 f. 

PERFECTION, MORAL, the hope 
of, chap. VI, 162 f., 166 f., 



180 f., 258 f.; historical 
character of the striving for, 
169 f.; worth of the ideal 
of, 171 f., 175 f., 180 f.; 
religious nature of, 180 f ., 
186 f., 197 f., 257 f . 

PESSIMISM, the, of Absolutism, 
91 f. 

"PHILOSOPHY OF CONDUCT" 
(quoted], 49 f., 115 f. 

"PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION" 
(quoted], 196 f., 217 f., 236 f., 
239 f ., 250 f., 297 f. 

PINDAR, 244 

PLATO, his doctrine of knowl- 
edge, vi, 131; and of right, 
viiif.; his "Republic," 129; 
and on immortality, 245 

PRAYER, nature of, 186 f., 
188 f . ; Brahminical doctrine 
of, 189 

RELIGION, "cult" of, 186 f.; 
r-~ as ambition for moral per- 
fection, 180 f., 197 f., 258 f.; 
as founded in faith, 191 f.; 
and hope, 186 f., 191 f., 
246 f., 254 f.; and confi- 
dence in immortality, 247 f., 
254 f.; and the Divine King- 
dom, 279 f., 288 f., 291 f., 
297; characteristics of the 
future, 298 f . 

RENAN, 158 

SABATIER, on nature of re- 
ligion, 281 



[309] 



INDEX 



SACRIFICE, as religious cult, 

188, 198 f.; different forms 

of, 198 
SALVATION, the hope of, 169, 

179 f., 184 f., 191 f., 197 f.; 

doctrine of the "Way" of, 

181 f., 186 f., 188 f., 197 f., 

243 
SCIENCE, hopes of, chap. V, 

122, 125 f., 131 f ., 139, 163; 

conception of, 127, 132 f., 

136 f.; limitations of, 135 f., 

164 f. 
SCHOPENHAUER, pessimism of, 

91 
SOCIALISM, certain illusory 

hopes of, 102, 146 f., 149 f., 

152 f. 

SOPHOCLES, 278 
SOUL, belief in its separability, 

214 f., 218, 238, 246 f.; and 

multiplicity, 217 f.; Hebrew 

doctrine of, 218; its natural 

indestructibility, 222 f., 241; 

instrumental theory of, 238; 

substantiality of, 241 f.; 

Homeric doctrine of, 246 f . 



SPINOZA, 201, 208 
STATE, the, conception of the 
perfect, 129 f. 

TACT, as used hi cultivating 
hope, 100 f., 116 f., 117 f. 

TEMPERAMENT, the so-called 
"sanguine" or hopeful, 9 f., 
204 f.; influence on hope of 
immortality, 203 f . 

THALES, alleged saying of, 1 f., 
" 12 f. 

THOREAU, 84 

TIELE, 188 f., 281 

VON DEN STEINEN, on natural 
belief in immortality, 209 

"WHAT CAN I KNOW" (quo- 
ted), 69 f., 141 

"WHAT OUGHT I TO Do" 
(quoted), 172 f., 175 f. 

WUNDT, on belief in immor- 
tality, 201 

ZEND-AVESTA, 170 



[310] 



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WHAT CAN I KNOW? 

An Inquiry into Truth, its Nature, The Means of its Attainment, 
and its Relations to the Practical Life. By George Trumbull Ladd, 
LL.D. Crown 8vo., $1.50 net. 

This book, while bringing to bear on the problem of knowledge the more recent 
points of view, both psychological and philosophical, aims chiefly at helping the 
reader in the culture and practical uses of the mental life. Thus it considers not 
only the nature and guaranties of knowledge, but especially how knowledge may be 
used to attain its most important ends. These are the ideals and the behavior that 
have value. Without being controversial, it furnishes material for criticism of the 
errors and half-truths of Pragmatism and other current theories as to the meaning 
and worth of Truth. Its conclusions lie in " the middle of the road," between the 
extremes of intellectual over-confidence or an easy credulousness and excessive skep. 
ticism or agnostic despair. Inasmuch as all knowledge involves the higher senti- 
ments and the activities of " free will," its attainment and culture become a matter 
of personal obligation and moral concernment. In this way this Treatise serves as 
an Introduction for those which are to follow, and which will treat of Duty, Faith., 
and Hope, in further defence of a consistent system of rationalism in opinion and in 
conduct. _____ 

For such ... as are seeking a satisfying answer to the inquiry propounded by 
this volume a veteran thinker here cuts an easily traveled path through the mazes 
of the subject, clearing it of entanglements, and steadily keeping in view its issues 
in practical value for the rational conduct of life. The Outlook. 



The man of learning who puts into a little book his best and most availably 
useful thought, so simply expressed that all who are intelligent, with or without 
technical training, may understand, does an eminently good thing. . . . Dr. Ladd 
approaches his subject as one seeking for practical light and leading. Dluminatingly 
he discusses the question of the limitations of human knowledge, the effects of 
heredity and of environment, including the opinions of others, everywhere deepen- 
ing the significance of those lessons which common sense and experience teach with 
more or less thoroughness to the virtuous and the intelligent. Analyzing the 
process by which we know, he sums up his results in the notable saying that 
"knowledge is a matter of the entire man the real knower is the whole self, not 
as a ' naked mind,' but as a living soul." North American Review. 



These far reaching questions, as we have intimated, are answered by Professor 
Ladd from the point of view which he has reached in his own long course of reflective 
thinking. For the most part his results are not only wholesome and constructive in 
themselves, but they are stated in moderate terms. Later novelties in the epistemo- 
logical field are also taken into account, ... the style is planned for the comprehqn- 
sion of the knower little versed in technical forms. Without writing down to the 
level of the plain man, Professor Ladd has been at pains to phrase his conclusions as 
simply as may be. The Philosophical Review, March, 1915. 



Longmans, Green, & Co.'s Publications 



WHAT OUGHT I TO DO ? 

An Inquiry into the Hature and Kinds of Virtue, and into 
the Sanctions, Aims and Values of the Moral Life. By George 
Trumbull Ladd, LL.D. Crown 8vo, $1.50 net. 

This second volume of the Series of Four Questions deals with the problem of 
Duty in similar manner to that in which the preceding volume dealt with the prob- 
lem of Knowledge. After defining the meaning of the question, it traces the origins 
and development of responsibility, in the feelings naively expressed by the phrases 
" I ought " and " I can." The significance and value of the intention of being good 
and of doing one's duty are discussed in separate chapters, which are followed by a 
brief defence of the supreme worth of moral ideals in the evolution of personal life. 
A chapter on the many virtues is supplemented by one raising the inquiry; " Is there 
one only virtue ? " in which the essentials of all the^others may be summed up and 
expressed. Other laws are then contrasted with the Moral Law, and certain maxims 
helpful for the settling of cases of conscience are then suggested. The book ends 
with two~chapters which bear the titles, " The Final Issue " and " Morality and 
Religion." 

... a practical treatise on moral conduct that amply repays a careful study. One 
who reads it repeatedly will be fully rewarded. American Lutheran Survey. 

Professor Ladd . . . avails himself of the psychological method of approach, avoids 
abstractions and thinks of the moral life in its concrete situations, which gives his 
work a practical character. It is a wise and helpful book. The Congregationalist. 

The work makes a thoughtful analysis of moral ideas, and studies with close, clear 
reasoning the relations between knowledge and conduct, between the several virtues, 
between custom and the moral law, and between ethics and religion . . . written 
in a manner so free from academic or scholastic technicality that it should not fail 
to attract and stimulate those who, without wishing to specialize, read philosophy 
for culture's sake. The Scotsman, Edinburgh. 

... a volume which it may be presumed sums up the ripest fruits of many long 
years of reflective thinking on the problems of human conduct. The book, it need 
hardly be said, contains very much that is worth reading and attending to, an 
abundance of fertile ideas, keen observations, interesting allusions, the whole con- 
veyed with that urbanity and geniality . . . characteristic of all the author's 
writings. The Ecclesiastical Review. 

... a book which penetrates to the heart of things and answers the deepest ques- 
tion which time or eternity will ever raise for any human soul to act upon. 

Boston Evening Transcript. 

The very title of this volume pointedly addresses it to a widely felt need in the 
present crisis of civilization, in the birth pangs of a new social order, and perplexing 
questions of personal and social duty. The Outlook, N.Y. 



Longmans, Green, & Co.'s Publications 



WHAT SHOULD I BELIEVE ? 

An inquiry into the Nature, Grounds and Value of the Faiths of 
Science, Society, Morals and Religion. By George Trumbull Ladd, 
LL.D. Crown 8vo., $1.50 net. 

The first task of this volume is to describe the elements of the mental attitude 
of Belief so as to distinguish it, on the one hand, from Knowledge, and on the 
other, from mere opinion. In this connection the truth of the doctrine of the so- 
called " will to believe " is briefly discussed. The central thought of the book is 
reached, however, in a chapter which bears the title " Lesser and Greater Beliefs," 
and which attempts to distinguish those forms of this mental attitude that make 
claims upon the conscience, put the person under rational obligations, and offer the 
comfort and rewards of right belief. Chapters then follow which give more special 
and detailed consideration to certain scientific and social beliefs; and, after describing 
the minor differences between simple belief and so-called faith, vindicate at con- 
siderable length the more important and fundamental of the faiths of morality and 
of religion. 

This admirable treatise strongly emphasizes the need of moral earnestness in the 
selection of the beliefs that have best stood time's test by human experience. For 
without this the world of men now crying for a rehabilitation of religious faith will 
cry in vain. The Outlook, N. Y. 

(This) series of books on knowledge, ethics and belief, to be completed by an 
inquiry into the sources and reasonableness of human homes is a work of which 
Americans may be justly proud. . . . Professor Ladd handles sensible questions in a 
sensible way, and sensible people will thank him for giving them a loaf when they 
ask for bread The Sun, N.Y. 



WHAT MAY I HOPE ? 

An Inquiry into the Sources and Reasonableness of Human 
Hopes, especially the Social and Religious. By George Trumbull 
Ladd, LL.D. Crown 8vo., $1.50 net. 

This fourth and last of the volumes that attempt to deal with problems of practi- 
cal philosophy in a manner to help toward a better and more truly successful life, 
has for its subject the complex emotion of Hope. While admitting that psychologi- 
cal Tscience encounters especial obstacles in this task, the author gives a more 
complete analysis of the nature and sources of hoping than will be found elsewhere. 
He then proceeds to consider the limitations, assurance, and practical uses of hope. 
A chapter follows concerning hopes scientific, political and social. The books 
closes with a somewhat lengthy discussion of the hope of moral perfection (or in 
religious terminology, " the hope of salvation "); the hope of immortality; and the 
hope of a perfect society, or a " Divine Kingdom." 

The same earnest effort is made which seems by common consent to have been 
successful in the preceding volumes to maintain throughout clearness and sim- 
plicity of style, and to keep the practical issues always prominently in mind. 



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